Despite its remote location, Antarctica plays a significant role in the entire global system. The Antarctica region fascinates and arouses interests, not only for its wildness, unique speces and fabulous landscape but also for scientific reasons. Antarctica is the perfect place to search for clues to the complex workings of the planet's climate. This region enables us to measure physical processes and characteristics including changes in climate and sea levels, atmospheric systems and oceans currents. That is the reason why many Nations have invested in scientific research in Antarctica.

Climate change in Antarctica is one of the greatest ecological concerns at the moment, probably because this phenomenon is most observable in the Polar Regions. Considerable data has shown that this region has warmed up dramatically during the past 50 years which caused surface temperature to rise by 4.5°F (2.5°C).
National Geographic website plublished an article on that matter .

This change of climate in Antarctica has proved to cause disruption on the food chain and therefore has affected the behaviour of certain species such as Penguins or Blue whales.

Some researches completed in 2004 showed that the number of Krill (shrimp-like creature) which is part of the diet of many Antarctic species has decreased by 80%. Warmer sea surface temperatures reduced the amount of ice in the sea which in turn reduced the presence of algae that grows on it. It is thought that this decrease affected the number of Krill present in the area. Several articles such as the one published on the WWF web site on the 19th July 2001 have described this phenomenon. Click here to read this article.

A BBC News article dated of 3 November 2004 also explained this problem: click here to find out more

The decrease of number of Krill in the Antarctic seas seems also to be the cause of late breeding in sea birds and even the decrease of some species present in the region. Indeed, scientist have determined that species such as Emperor penguins for example have declined due do higher temperatures in the region with a decrease of 50% in the past 50 years. Check out this article from National Geographic News.

A very interesting article provided by the International Polar Foundation and published by RTD info magazine on European research (issue May 2005) gives us a good insight on climate change and various scientific researches and how it is affecting our planet. Information link

What is currently happening in Antarctica is viewed by some organisations such as WWF as a real threat. To find out more, check out this publication.