UAE explorers witness Antarctica’s alarming climate change impact

UAE explorers witness Antarctica’s alarming climate change impact

ABU DHABI: A four-member team of Antarctica explorers from the UAE is shocked by unprecedented events during their expedition that reveal the alarming impact of climate change on the icy continent. A tiny creature’s shrinking population that affects the entire wildlife, collapse of an ice shelf, a record high temperature and an unseasonal rain during the recent expedition to the seventh continent are a grave cause for concern, they tell the Emirates News Agency (WAM). “Antarctica made me think of life as an ecosystem. The shocking extreme events we have witnessed in a short period of time -– historical temperature increase and rainy days in a desert-like continent -–left us befuddled about the fate of Antarctica and the globe,” says Athraa Khamis, an Emirati water and environmental engineer at DP World’s Tumoohi programme. “The ecosystem was also shivering as the primary food of all the fascinating Antarctic wildlife -– a shrimp-like crustacean called krill –- losing its homes, the dry glaciers, which are melted due to global warming. They are being killed because of climate change. Those disorders in the ecosystem would definitely affect the life forms not only in Antarctica, but everywhere,” explains Khamis who was part of the