New Observations Confirm Greenland, Antarctica Losing Land Ice Rapidly
A new study just published shows that—using more accurate measurements than ever before—Greenland and Antarctica are together losing ice at incredible rates: Together, over 500 (±107) cubic kilometres of ice are melting from them every year.
That means 450 billion tons of ice are lost every year, melted away into the oceans. That’s staggering.
CryoSat-2 satellite measures the height of the ice over the two land masses. As they lose ice, the height drops, and that change is seen by the satellite.
They also found that West Antarctica—the focus of much concern lately—is losing ice three times faster now than it was in the time period from 2003–2009. Note that they did find a mild increase in ice in eastern Antarctica, which was known before as well, but it’s not nearly enough to compensate for the huge losses elsewhere.
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