Antarctica Will Become Habitable In The Next Two Centuries Due To Climate Change

(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Could Antarctica become habitable in the next two centuries? originally appeared on Quora: the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.

Answer by Dave Consiglio, Chemistry and Physics High School Teacher and Community College Professor, on Quora:

Could Antarctica become habitable in the next two centuries? Amazingly, the answer is yes! First, to be clear, we can live there now, but only with food shipped in. And no matter how intense global warming gets, Antarctica will always have one enemy: darkness.

It’s conceivable that the temperatures on Antarctica, particularly on the coast, could be warm enough for “normal” people to live there, but the maximum solar angle is still so low for the entirety of the continent that plants would really struggle to survive.

The maximum angle of the sun on the summer solstice is given by:

A = 90 – L + 23.5

Where L is the latitude.

Since almost all of Antarctica is south of the Antarctic circle (66.5 degrees south), the maximum solar angle on the longest day of the year is:

90 – 66.5 + 23.5 = 47 degrees.

Now, while that sounds quite high, it’s really not. The sun is only that high at solar noon, and only on one day of the year (around December 21st – Antarctica’s summer solstice).

During the summer, the sun is above the horizon for long stretches, but always at low angles. During the spring and fall, the sun is above and below the horizon for roughly equal periods of time, but when the sun is above the horizon, it’s only barely so. And of course, in winter, it’s dark for very long stretches. I thought these conditions would be unsuitable for subsistence agriculture, but it turns out there’s a place very much like what the coast of Antarctica might be like on a much warmer Earth: Vesterålen, Northern Norway. This lovely Norwegian town is just north of the Arctic circle. The Antarctic coast is more or less on the Antarctic circle, and thus gets similar amounts of insolation. As you can from the pictures on this site, some plants do grow here, but you’d have to be pretty selective in your crop choice. Barley and potatoes can be grown, as well as grasses for grazing.

Antarctica is currently very dry, but with climate change going the way it is, it’s possible that not only temperature but precipitation could significantly increased, and if it did, it’s possible that humans could live there without food from the outside.

Life will never be self-sustaining in a traditional agricultural sense much farther south than the coast. As you can see in the second link above, farming becomes less and less tenable the farther from the equator you get. Get south of around 75 degrees, and there simply isn’t enough sunlight to farm. In addition, even with major levels of global warming, it would still be quite cold there due to the long stretches of darkness and isolation from the oceans.

One final note: two centuries is not that much time for our climate. If we continue burning fossil fuels without slowing down for the next 200 years, I suspect the coastal temperature in Antarctica might rise as much as 10 degrees Celsius, maybe even more. That’s enough for a legitimate growing season, warm enough for grazing animals, and habitable enough for a self-sufficient human colony.

I’ll say it again: amazingly, the answer is yes!