A quarter of the Antarctic ice from the West is now unstable, according to a study

Stop me if you've heard this before, but the ice is fucking. New discoveries released on Thursday reveal that a quarter of the Antarctic ice sheets from the West, the most vulnerable part of the continent, has been destabilized. Ice loss has increased five-fold on the region's most endangered glaciers. in just 25 years.

Scientists have used 800 million satellite measurements taken since 1992 to draw their conclusions. The results, published in Geophysical Research Letters, highlight the speed with which changes are occurring and the dangers that coastal communities may face if the ice continues to melt at a brisk pace.

The ways we know West Antarctica are melting are multiple. Ground measurements, overflights by NASA scientists and occasional boat tours. But to have an overview, the satellites provide a crucial view from the space. The researchers used data from a series of European Space Agency satellites that have been monitoring Antarctica since 1992. These satellites are equipped with lasers that measure the height of the ice that covers the Antarctic and extends into the sea. The 25-year-old researchers are looking at how the height of the ice has changed over time. The researchers identified unstable areas where rapid thinning and ice loss occurred.

The good news is that East Antarctica, the highest and coldest part of Antarctica (which contains most of the continent's ice), is largely stable. Anyway, what's happening in the West is not trivial. Research shows that the region has enough ice over the past 25 years to fill Lake Erie nearly 12 times. And it gets worse than that!

The results show that 24% of the icecap is now unstable, with some parts having cleared by 400 feet in the last 25 years alone. This is what an ice-cream researcher at the University of Leeds and senior author, Andy Shepherd, called "extraordinary amounts" in a press release. Extraordinary is not a superlative you want to hear in the case of West Antarctica. The imbalance caused ice formation from the endangered Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, which retained huge stocks of ice on the mainland, to spread five times faster in the ocean in 2017 than in 1992, contributing to the rise in sea level.

If these glaciers break up and the ice behind them falls into the sea, the sea level could rise more than 10 feet and completely reshape the coastline. The new study is an important check on the distance that separates us.