Nature News
Climate change could put trees on Antarctica
Jul 12, 2006, 11:26 GMT
Sydney - The planet is heating up so quickly that trees could be growing on the South Pole within a century or two, a meeting of Antarctic scientists in Australia was told Wednesday.
Robert Dunbar, from Stanford University in the United States, told the gathering in Hobart that with carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere set to double, Antarctica could return to how it looked 20 million years ago.
'There were trees, there were bushes, there were fields of grass,' Professor Dunbar told the 850 members of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
'In fact, the evidence of pollen fossils is that much of Antarctica was vegetated and these were plants that were able to adapt to periods of darkness. But the key is that it wasn't cold enough to freeze water.'
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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