'Dramatic people' who study while experiencing extreme extremes in the extreme northern and southern ends of the earth.

A collaboration project between the people of the Polar Research Institute and Soup, who often go back and forth to the Antarctic and the Arctic, which are difficult for ordinary people to visit once in their lifetime!

Hear their stories on the front lines of climate change!

(Written by Lee Won-sang, Director of Glacier Environment Research Division, Polar Research Institute

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“Shall we go to Mojito and drink Maldives?”

It seems to be the most talked about line among the lines in the movie 'Inside Men'.

When I can spend some leisurely time someday, I have a natural desire to enjoy a good time under the dazzling sunlight of the Maldives beach.

However, I don't know if we can afford to wait until we have this free time.



Last summer, without fail, an article titled “The ice in Arctic Greenland is melting and disappearing at an unprecedented rate” made headlines overseas.

Even more surprising is that of the 44 Septembers since 1979, when the state of the Greenland ice has been steadily observed, early September 2022 was recorded as the time when the most ice melted.

The extent of Arctic sea ice is also breaking new records every year.

Undoubtedly, it is the impact of rapid 'climate change' caused by human industrial activities.



The relatively soft tone of 'climate change' seems to soften the seriousness of the blockbuster disaster situation we are actually experiencing, so in this article, I would like to use the expression 'climate emergency' instead.


Climate emergency, we're running out of time

In December 2015, the historic 'Paris Agreement' was adopted in Paris to respond to this 'climate emergency'.

The main content is to make global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to keep the increase in global average temperature at a level significantly below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels and to limit it to 1.5°C.

Many countries, including Korea, are competing to present ambitious plans for carbon neutrality and are struggling to come up with multifaceted solutions to the 'climate emergency'.



In the case of Korea, the industrial sector has to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, and it is said that the cost that companies must bear for this is a whopping 200 trillion won.

In the end, concerns that it could lead to a decrease in employment and a weakening of corporate competitiveness should also be taken into consideration.

However, given that at the end of 2021, the damage from the world's top 10 natural disasters caused by climate change is at least 202 trillion won, it is difficult to prioritize what to prioritize for sustainable development not only for the current generation but also for future generations. It means a lot.

In the end, if we do not act right away, it is clear that the burden our descendants will have to bear will increase like a snowball.



If all the ice in Greenland in the Arctic melts, the global average sea level will rise by 7 m, and if all the ice in Antarctica melts, the global average sea level will rise by 58 m.

Of course, it is not something that will happen tomorrow in Incheon or Busan.

According to the 6th IPCC Climate Change Assessment Report, released in 2021, it is predicted that sea level will rise by 1.1m by 2100 if greenhouse gas reduction efforts are not made.

It means that it is about the height of the waist of an adult male in Korea.

Even more bleak is the fact that a sea level rise of more than 2m is expected if we take into account the collapse of the polar ice sheet, which is melting furiously right now.

Quite a few coastal cities around the world are unlikely to escape extensive flooding.




Countries are actively utilizing the results of prediction models based on scientific evidence to prepare countermeasures for coastal flood damage at the government level.

The problem is that we still don't know how much and how quickly the polar ice will melt, so the forecasts are very uncertain.



Among them, the Thwaites Glacier located in West Antarctica, which is called the 'end-of-day glacier', is melting the fastest in the entire Antarctic region, which poses great uncertainty in its prediction.

Meanwhile, experts judge that the glacier is already in a very dangerous situation that can no longer be reversed.

Once this glacier melts away, the sea level rises by 65 cm. A more serious problem is that the huge ice mass in the upper reaches has been acting as a kind of breakwater that effectively controls the flow into the sea. This is expected to result in a sea level rise of 5.3m.

It is a dizzying situation in which all buildings about two stories high are submerged in water.




In 2001, news broke that the government of Tuvalu, a small island nation with a population of about 10,000 located in the South Pacific, had declared abandonment of the country due to flooding caused by sea level rise.

Of course it was fake news.

But given the 'climate emergency' we're in right now, it's probably just a matter of time. 



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