Ask Lemmy

Not in a meaningful timeframe, I think. Even if we get a worst case outcome (say +5°C by 2100, ongoing warming), permanent land ice in Antarctica will likely take many hundreds, or even thousands of years to melt entirely.

It's always going to have frozen winters with lots of snow, due to the long dark polar winter.. I guess some boreal tundra species could survive that, but farming is probably unlikely to be viable, I would guess.

Yes, while simultaneously making huge swaths of the rest of the world uninhabitable.

Besides temperature there's the issue of sunlight.
We'd need plants for agriculture adapted to a completely new life cycle.

In short, no. Not at least outside of a vast geological timeframe. Antarctica was once habitable around 100 million years ago, and that was only because it was part of a supercontinent located much further north than its current location.

Even if the earth warmed enough to melt the ice at the poles, its location would basically make it impossible to maintain a complex ecology suitable to life. The light cycle of roughly 24 hours of light in the summer and 24 hours of darkness in the winter would preclude the needed agriculture requirements needed to sustain any meaningful population.

Its already technically habitable. The knife and some associated islands that stick up and sorta point toward south america have year around settlements but they are basically army bases. They have schools and post offices and such though.

If we are talking about sustaining agriculture, likely not but it wouldn't be a heat related problem.

Any decent plant growth needs a soil base, and Antarctica's soil is likely to be incredibly shallow and not bioactive. If you look at places like Iceland and the Scottish Highlands, those places lost a lot of soil as forestry removed the topsoil protection. You would need to implement significant resources into improving very marginal agricultural land.

Also, while the continent is covered in ice, there isn't much in terms of precipitation.

Could be but I am afraid we, all, will not be able to see it.

Define "habitable".

Several countries maintain year round outposts. The facilities are generally used for science and claiming territory, but tourism is becoming bigger and restrictions on mining and fishing may go away. That could create economically sustainable communities, even if they rely on trade for their non-fish food.

Beyond that, I doubt that the continent could sustain more life than it currently has unless parts of the continent were forested.

Before that happens, we'll see the thawing of Canadian permafrost.

Reference: Once upon a time I built the equipment & housing reservation and booking system for the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium (BASC), who at the time managed all US and Russian research in the north (so other side, but some similar challenges).

You'd be surprised by some of the unique issues for modern life. Food is of course the obvious one, but there are super crazy ones. For instance, we could only issue Apple laptops, because they were the only ones who's screens wouldnt have pixel freeze in the field.

In any event, unlikely to be permanent inhabitants there unless the planet already wiped us out, in my uneducated opinion.

Follow up question that I fear may shed top much light on how dumb I am... is there land under the polar ice caps? I guess I never thought about it but assumed they were just frozen masses.

Sure, for whatever replaces us.