Green space now covers nearly 5 square miles of Antarctica

Antarctica has been greening really, really fast, according to a recently published article in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience. The new research presents a meta-analysis of Landsat images from the last 40 years, tracking the spread of vegetation on the Antarctic Peninsula.

The earliest images, from 1986, show about 8,000 square feet of green on the continent—less than a single football field. Thanks to man-made global warming, that area has expanded to cover nearly 5 square miles. And it's gotten worse since 2016 in particular, with the rate of greenification accelerating by roughly 30 percent. Or, as Inside Climate News puts it, "fast enough to cover nearly 75 football fields per year."

Inside Climate News also spoke with one of the co-authors of the paper, Thomas Roland, a paleoecologist with the University of Exeter, who said that:

As the planet heats up, "even the coldest regions on Earth that we expect and understand to be white and black with snow, ice, and rock are starting to become greener as the planet responds to climate change," he said.

The tenfold increase in vegetation cover since 1986 "is not huge in the global scheme of things," Roland added, but the accelerating rate of change and the potential ecological effects are significant. "That's the real story here," he said. "The landscape is going to be altered partially because the existing vegetation is expanding, but it could also be altered in the future with new vegetation coming in."

I suppose the silver lining of all of this is that lots of new plantlife will soon be able to thrive in Antarctica. Including lots of invasive species. Which could also lead to all kinds of other complications. But still. I'm trying to be positive instead of freaking out.

Previously:
Pouring a literal ice-cold can of Coke in -70°F Antarctica