[ad_1]
Antarctica is rapidly losing ice, according to new satellite information.
Glaciers are now sliding into the sea due to warming of the Southern Ocean, the ice disappearing five times faster than in the 1990s.
The Western Antarctic Ice Sheet was stable a few decades ago, but new evidence shows that nearly a quarter of it is thinning out.
In the most affected areas, more than 328 feet of ice thickness were lost.
If the ice cover of West Antarctic is completely lost, the sea level will rise by about 16 feet.
This rise in sea level would drown coastal cities around the world.
Scientists believe that the sea level is currently rising to the extreme limit of what was expected to happen gradually only a few years ago and that current ice losses would double every decade.
This research was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
It describes how scientists used satellite images to compare the size of the ice sheets from 1992 to 2017 with meteorological information.
"Since its inception in the 1990s, the thinning has gradually spread to the inland over the last 25 years, which is fast in glaciological terms," said Andy Shepherd, who was leading the study.
"There was talk of the speed at which ice was removed from a layer of ice in the geological epoch, but that has now been replaced by people's lives."
Shepherd also pointed out that some glaciers, such as the basins of the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, have exceeded half their melting.
This new work should help researchers to identify more precisely where the sea level will rise so that appropriate preparations can be made to try to save the affected areas.
It is thought that the bottom of the glaciers is melting because the sea is too hot and even snowfall can not compensate for the damage.
Shepherd added: "In parts of Antarctica, the ice sheet has thinned considerably."
He now thinks that the West Antarctic melting has caused a 5mm rise in sea level since 1992.
He concluded, "Before having any useful satellite measurements from space, most glaciologists thought that the polar ice caps were quite isolated from climate change and had not changed at all quickly.
"Now we know that it's not true."
[ad_2]
Source link