The second edition of the volume has been published Antarctic climate evolution edited by Fabio Florindo, research manager of INGV, Martin Siegert, co-director of the Grantham Institute of Imperial College London, Laura De Santis, researcher of OGS (National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics) and Tim Naish, Professor at the Antarctic Research Center of Victoria University, New Zealand.
Four authors, among the world's leading experts, who have contributed to a first-of-its-kind work aimed at improving our understanding of the history of the world's largest ice sheet and how it has responded to and influenced climate change over the course of of the Cenozoic.
Many topics covered in the chapters: terrestrial and marine geology, sedimentology, modeling, glaciology and much more in a volume directed at university students and researchers.
To find out more, we interviewed Fabio Florindo who illustrated the characteristics of this edition of the book, published by Elsevier.
Fabio, how did the idea for this book come about?
The proposal came from Elsevier herself. Between 2003 and 2007, when we were members of the Antarctic Climate Evolution program of the SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) we published, for the publishing house, 8 special volumes dedicated to the evolution and climate change of Antarctica. A large number of downloads of the publications were made from all over the world and the publishing house proposed us to write a Book; thus, in 2008, the first edition was born.
After more than ten years we have been asked for a second edition; we wanted to expand the contents, so we asked colleagues Laura De Santis and Tim Naish to collaborate in the creation of the volume.
What is the goal you have set for yourself with this second edition?
Over the past 13 years there have been huge advances in our understanding of ice sheet evolution, the continent's climate and the Southern Ocean.
The time had therefore come to take stock of the situation, and so we started working on the second edition of the volume; it wasn't easy because we had to synthesize an enormous amount of scientific papers published after 2008 and it took us about three years to complete the work.
How is the volume organized inside?
The book is articulated in about 800 pages, distributed in 13 chapters.
As with the previous edition, it follows the internal structure of the ACE SCAR program but is updated with the contributions made thanks to the more recent PAIS (Past Antarctic Ice Sheets) programme. There are texts on modelling, glaciology and the geological history of the continent, up to 120 million years ago when Antarctica positioned itself at the south pole with the movement of tectonic plates.
Ample space is given to the future and to the research to be conducted in the coming years. To this end there are projections of climate change in Antarctica, sea level and the large ice caps.
Let's talk about the target audience. Who is the volume aimed at?
When we signed our first contract with Elsevier, we were asked for a level suitable for university students, so this is a specialized text.
More than 800 copies were sold in the first two years: an excellent result for a book of this kind; many volumes were purchased from the United States and European countries.
So also for this new edition we have mainly addressed university students and researchers.
What are the new elements of this new edition?
This edition is much more than an update of the previous one: there are completely new chapters, such as those dedicated to modeling and glaciology.
Furthermore, a historical part has been included which deals with the birth and history of the SCAR which recently celebrated 60 years of coordination and support for research in Antarctica.
Both the historical and scientific parts are very different from the first edition: the research goes on and evolves in different directions and over the years the way in which the topics are treated has also changed.
Given the variety of topics, we asked for the collaboration of the best international researchers. This has allowed us to reach a very high level of content: at the moment, as far as research in Antarctica and in the Southern Ocean is concerned, there is nothing comparable.
Finally, What is the message that this volume wants to convey to the reader?
By now we are all aware of what is happening globally: the oceans are rising 3 millimeters a year, progressively accelerating, and the projections of global surface temperatures reach values well beyond the degree and a half within which we are trying to stay.
This book is intended to convey a message to young students and researchers about how sensitive the polar areas are and the impact they can have on us.
If the West Antarctic ice sheet melted, the world's oceans would rise by about 6 meters while the large East Antarctic ice sheet would contribute 65 meters with a huge impact on coastal cities, think for example of Venice, Los Angeles or San Francisco: a scenario that could trigger mass migrations with very complex implications.
The climatic changes that take place in the polar areas are amplified, they manifest themselves immediately, they are real "traffic lights" that show us what to pay attention to.
The volume's message is twofold: when decisions are made, including political ones, these must be based on scientific evidence.
Furthermore, there is still time to stem the damage we have caused but the Earth system takes years, centuries to heal itself. It's time to act.