The world’s greatest ice sheet has lost twice as much ice over the past 25 years than was previously believed, according to a satellite analysis released on Wednesday (August 11), since Antarctica’s coastal glaciers are losing icebergs more quickly than the environment can replenish the melting ice.
New worries have been raised about how quickly climate change is degrading Antarctica’s floating ice shelves, which contribute to rising sea levels throughout the world, according to a study headed by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and published in the journal Nature.
Ice shelves form over a tens of thousands of years. Once developed, they serve as buttresses to prevent glaciers from descending into oceans, which might cause sea levels to rise. Their size is constant as a cycle of calving and regrowth keeps them. However, in recent decades, warmer oceans have damaged the shelves from below.
The study’s key finding was that the amount of ice being lost from coastal glaciers calving into the ocean in Antarctica is comparable to the amount of ice that scientists already knew was being lost due to thinning brought on by glacier melting. The report also asserted that since 1997, thinning and calving had reduced the volume of Antarctica’s ice shelves by 12 trillion tonnes, which is twice as much as was predicted and equal in size to Switzerland. He asserted that 88% of the world’s ice might cause the sea level to rise.
In a press statement, JPL scientist Chad Greene stated that Antarctica was ‘crumbling at its edges.”‘
NASA estimates that during the years 2002 and 2022, losses averaged about 149 million tonnes annually. Since 1997, the team has measured and documented glacier flow and calving using satellite images. According to research, Antarctica’s glaciers will return to their pre-2000 levels by the end of the century.
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