Furthermore, while the Antarctic ice sheet is indeed increasing in size, this is not true for its northern counterpart, the Arctic. Its bright surface reflects 50% to 70% of sunlight back into space. Determining whether Antarctica is melting or not is a topic of tremendous scientific and societal importance, even more so in the context of climate warming. "It isn't just one type of measurement. The polar ice sheets grow via snow accumulation and shrink through melting and the production of icebergs. Over the last 25 years, melting Antarctic ice has added nearly 3 trillion tons of water to the ocean, enough to fill Lake Erie six times over. He attributed the retreat to the warming waters around West Antarctica 6. "Antarctica is melting away," Rignot told CNN, "not just in a couple of places." Thinning of the ice shelf reduces its buttressing effect on the glacier behind it, allowing glacier flow to speed up. Larger Image. Res. A new NASA study says that Antarctica is overall accumulating ice. 12 J. H. Mercer, "West Antarctic ice Sheet and CO2 Greenhouse Effect-Threat of Disaster," Nature, 271 (5643), 321-325 (1978). These findings don’t necessarily mean that Antarctica is growing; it’s still losing mass, even with the extra snowfall. The dark red area at the bottom is the Ross sea, where 80% of Antarctic sea ice is being created by cold air blowing off the continent. And she points out that it isnât just the Grace data that show accelerating loss; the radar data do, too. The thinner shelf is also more likely to crack. Res. "And the … 44, No. EXCLUSIVE: Ice in the Arctic and Antarctic is 'not melting', says global warming expert THE North and South Poles are "not melting", according to Dr Benny Peiser a global warming expert. The Antarctic has gained about 7,300 square miles of ice each year since the late 1970s. NASA just released a study showing that Antarctica is actually gaining ice at a faster rate than it’s losing it. The ice and exposed seawater absorb more solar energy and this causes more melting and more warming. Regardless of what was happening in the Antarctic sea, melting in the Arctic affected wildlife, coastal erosion and solar radiation absorption in the Arctic, she pointed out. Parkinson said it is too early to determine what exactly caused the trend to reverse. This summer, a British group revisited the Pine Island Glacier finding and found that its rate of retreat had quadrupled between 1995 and 2006 8. Antarctic land ice is the ice which has accumulated over thousands of years on the Antarctica landmass through snowfall. What these reports usually are missing are several critical points: This is one NASA study. Lett. The most recent minimum (February 2020) and maximum (September 2019) sea ice extents in the Antarctic were below average, but not record lows. Antarctica is a continent 98% covered by ice, surrounded by local ocean with much of its surface seasonally covered by sea ice. Climate models predict more snowfall than ice melting during the next 50 years, but models are not good enough for them to be confident about the prediction. The Thwaites glacier is similar in size and shape to Idaho. The ticking time bomb for sea-level rise is buried in the glaciers of Antarctica These charts show just how high sea levels will rise if Antarctica's ice continues melting at an alarming rate. That means more snow is falling on Antarctica, and more of the white stuff makes the top layers of the ocean less salty and thus less dense. Rignot's paper surprised many people. It covers an area of almost 14 million square kilometres (5.4 million square miles) and contains 26.5 million cubic kilometres (6,400,000 cubic miles) of ice. PUBLISHED: 03:58, Fri, Nov 6, 2015 | UPDATED: 07:46, Fri, Nov 6, 2015. Not any more. U.S. Known as East Antarctica, this section has an average altitude of about 2 kilometer (1.2 miles), higher than the American Colorado Plateau. The ticking time bomb for sea-level rise is buried in the glaciers of Antarctica These charts show just how high sea levels will rise if Antarctica's ice continues melting at an alarming rate. It's a series of independent measurements that are giving the same results, which makes it more robust.". A linear trend means you have the same mass loss every year. "Now that sea ice is retreating in both hemispheres we should be concerned about our planet's temperature because it means less of the sun's heat is reflected back into space," he added. A longstanding theory in glaciology is that these ice shelves tend to buttress (support the end wall of) glaciers, with their mass slowing the ice movement towards the sea, and this was confirmed by the spectacular collapse of the Rhode Island-sized Larsen B shelf along the Eastern edge of the Antarctic Peninsula in 2002. Antarctica seems to be both warming around the edges and cooling at the center at the same time. Res. 9, pages 4168–4175; May 16, 2017. The Antarctic ice sheet. If we want to understand how the ocean is impacting the ice sheet, go to where it's hitting the ice sheet with a sledgehammer, not with a little tack hammer. At the center at the University of Tasmania and more warming the summer, meltwater ponds on the Antarctica through! At the University of California, Irvine, uses Grace data to examine more! By ice, surrounded by local ocean with much of Antarctica is losing mass 11 absorb less solar and... 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