Conference on Antarctica at the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona

On Thursday, February 27, the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona will host the conference "Antarctica and the Southern Ocean facing Climate Change" by the academic Carlota Escutia Dotti.

Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are key pieces in the regulation of the global climate, acting as a planetary thermostat and a fundamental driver of ocean circulation. However, there are still major uncertainties about how global warming is affecting the mass loss of Antarctica.

One of the critical questions is whether the ice sheet of East Antarctica known as "the sleeping giant of sea level rise" is approaching an irreversible tipping point due to changes in heat transport to the Southern Ocean.

In this conference, we will explore how marine sedimentary records, accumulated over the past 55 million years, document the response of Antarctica and its ocean currents to past warming periods. These natural archives, extracted through drilling in the ocean floors, allow us to understand the processes that are currently accelerating ice melt and threatening the stability of the cryosphere.

Based on this evidence from the past, we will discuss what these records reveal about the future of Antarctica in the context of current global warming and how its transformations can affect human societies through sea level rise and disruption of global climate patterns.

Public session with limited seating capacity in the room.