Previously Unknown Loss of Antarctic Ice Discovered by NASA – “Antarctica Is Crumbling at Its Edges”
The biggest unknown in global sea level rise predictions is how quickly Antarctica's ice sheet will melt as the planet warms. The results of two analyses conducted by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California provide unexpectedly fresh information regarding the Antarctic Ice Sheet's recent mass loss. A recent study in the journal Nature illustrates how the Antarctic shoreline has evolved over the past 25 years as a result of iceberg calving, or the breaking off of ice from a glacier front. The ice sheet's edge has been losing icebergs more quickly than it can be replaced, the scientists discovered. With this unexpected discovery, the amount of ice that has been lost from the Antarctic's floating ice shelf since 1997 has increased from 6 trillion to 12 trillion metric tons. The ice shelves have become weaker due to ice loss through calving, allowing Antarctic glaciers to flow more quickly into the ocean and hastening the rate of sea ...