Now scientists find the speed at which sand dunes drift across the ground of this frigid desert has tripled in the past 40 years — a finding that could shed light on everything from the planet's warming climate to deserts on Mars.
Antarctica is not just the coldest of Earth's continents, but the driest and windiest. The scant areas that are free of snow and ice make up less than 0.4 percent of the continental land mass. In places there, the wind has built sand dunes.
The most extensive dune field is found in Victoria Valley, one of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, and it holds Antarctica's largest dune, 230 feet high and more than 650 feet wide.
Climate clues
Antarctica has been described as one of the most climatically sensitive ecosystems on Earth, meaning that one can look at changes there to help understand global trends in climate, explained geologist Charlie Bristow at Birkbeck College University of London. As such, evidence of changes "in the rates of physical processes that are climatically sensitive, such as the migration of sand dunes, is important," Bristow told OurAmazingPlanet.
Scientists also are investigating Antarctic dunes to learn more about the past; such cold-climate dunes covered large areas of northwest Europe at the end of the last Ice Age. Read the full report here.
Source: By Charles Q. Choi, OurAmazing Planet, MSNBC.com.
