What is black carbon? The latest way humans are causing changes in Antarctica

here are few places on Earth that humans haven't mucked up with the waste and pollution that comes from our gas-guzzling cars, the coal-fired electricity we power our homes with and the dust and soot that falls from the wildfires we've made worse.

Now even Antarctica — the only continent with no permanent human inhabitants — is being altered by the grit that follows us wherever we go.

A study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications found that the increasing human presence in Antarctica is causing more snow melt — bad news for a frozen world already battling the effects of human-caused global warming.

"(Antarctica) is currently one of the most rapidly warming regions on the planet," said Alia Khan, a snow and ice scientist at Western Washington University. "Snow is already melting due to impacts of climate change, but this is an exacerbating factor on snow melt."