Naked Antarctica (A story of Climate Change)

This hypothesis is based on current publicly available data about Antarctica and climate change found on the internet.

Climate change, regardless of cause, is a current hot button topic. It's effects and causes debated in entirety and the fallout of which may be understated. While sea level rise is certainly a danger, there lies greater risks to the planet from melting ice in critical places.

One place in particular, Antarctica, could possibly have catastrophic global consequences. The ice depresses the continental shelf 1/2 a mile into the earth. If this ice melts away and the majority of it run's off into the oceans (lakes and rivers will remain), the entire shelf rise. This will relieve much of the pressure on other tectonic plates, likely accelerating their movement. This will cause increased tectonic activity (ie Earthquakes, Volcanism, etc.) It will also likely cause an abscess in the Earth internally as the plate rises upward.

This abscess, if realized, will likely trigger super-volcanic activities. The dormant super volcanoes, one or more, may become active from such a radical change. This could cause events that shroud the earth in clouds, preventing the sun from reaching the surface and triggering an ice age, of possible epic proportions.

The Antarctic land mass may be the primary driver in the stability of our environment. Land having ice on it depressing in into the crust may be stalling tectonic activity, creating the stable world we live in. Without it, the surface of our planet could become much more hostile.

Naked Antarctica (A story of climate change) © 2025 by Jonathan K Gardner is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0