KEY POINTS:
Thousands of scientists from 63 countries are making a detailed study of the polar regions, where climate change is dramatically altering ice formations that have been stable for thousands of years.
During International Polar Year, which will actually run over two years, research will monitor changes such as the loss of sea ice in the Arctic and of ice shelves and ice sheets in the Antarctic.
European countries and other nations including the United States, Canada, Russia and Japan, will form a research coalition to explore and study some of the least-understood regions of the world.
"Global warming is the most challenging problem our society has ever had to face up to," said Sir David King, the British Government's chief scientist. "Ice is the canary in the coal mine of global warming."
Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, said: "The change of phase from snow and ice to water is the biggest tipping point in the Earth's system.
"So, over the next two years, I'm looking forward to major progress on key issues, such as: 'How are the ice sheets responding?' and indeed the trillion-dollar question from the point of view of sea-level rise: 'How much, how quickly?"'
A recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pointed out that the Arctic is one of the fastest-warming regions of the world and that summer sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere is likely to disappear by the end of the century.
Meanwhile, parts of Antarctica - notably the Antarctic Peninsula - have become so warm that ice shelves, large bodies of floating sea ice that are connected to the mainland, are disintegrating.
The fear is that the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, which have built up on land over thousands of years, will start to melt into the ocean, causing sea levels to rise.
"Parts of the ice sheets are responding to warming rather more quickly than glaciologists had thought," Professor Rapley said.
"The trouble is we've never seen a major ice sheet collapse before."
The scientists will undertake 228 studies during International Polar Year, including 170 scientific projects, and 57 educational plans to bring scientific information to schools and the public.
"It is much more than climate change. It's got everything from astronomy on the high plateaus of the Antarctic, through plate tectonics, to social sciences and the welfare of the northern indigenous peoples," Professor Rapley said.
The panel scientists predicted this month that average world temperatures could rise by between 1.8C and 4C this century, mainly because of carbon gases from burning fossil fuels for power and transport.
The temperature rises at the poles are expected to exceed that by a large margin.
Corinne Le Quere of the British Antarctic Survey said atmospheric concentrations of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, had fluctuated between 180 and 280 parts per million (ppm) for 650,000 years, but since 1850 they had shot up to more than 380ppm.
"We are on an unsustainable path," she said.
The Antarctic ice sheet is up to 4.8km thick in places and it holds 90 per cent of the world's fresh water. It is also crucial to the circulation of the world's ocean currents and therefore to planetary air circulation.
In the Arctic the problems also involve the four million people who live in the region. Already global warming is reducing the area of ocean ice by 3 per cent every decade.
Adding to the pressure, geologists calculate the Arctic may contain up to 25 per cent of the world's untapped oil reserves.
- INDEPENDENT
