POLAR ICE-CAP SHRINKING

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28742, 13 November 1958, Page 25

POLAR ICE-CAP SHRINKING

View Of Russian Scientist

There are indications that the South Pole ice-cap is shrinking, according to the Soviet scientist. Dr. Pyotr Shumsky, who has returned to the Soviet Union from the Russian Antarctic base at Mirny. Dr. Shumsky was reported in the “Soviet Weekly” as saying that surveys made in the area o( the extinct volcano. Mount Gauss, show that the surface of the ice had dropped by an average of 25 feet in 55 years. This was confirmed by the fact that the edge of the glacier had retreated from the edges of the moraines. Hence it follows that in the twentieth century, the Antarctic glacier has been retreating very slowly. It has now been established that in Antarctica the climate is gradually growing warmer. Although measurement of the thickness of the ice-sheet confirms that the centre of the Antarctic continent is a deep hollow falling half a mile below sea level, it would be wrong to conclude that it is a group of islands rather than a single land mass. If the weight of ice were removed, the land surface would rise to a little above sea level.

Interesting results have followed study of temperatures within the glacier and the rocks. Usually, temperature in boring rises as the depth increases, but in Antarctica, on the contrary, the greater the depth, the lower the temperature. This extraordinary phenomenon is found

in the top third of the ice cover.

while below this the temperature gradually rises.