The Antarctic Ice Sheet Has Lost 3 Trillion Tons of Ice Since 1992

The Antarctic Ice Sheet Has Lost 3 Trillion Tons of Ice Since 1992

6 years ago
Anonymous $roN-uuAfLt

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wjbbm5/antarctic-ice-sheet-melting-3-trillion-sea-level-rise

I haven’t seen Hereditary yet but I’m pretty sure this is the scariest thing I’ll come across all week: An international team of more than 70 scientists pored over two dozen estimates for ice loss in Antarctica gleaned from satellites and concluded that the ice sheet lost three trillion tons of ice between 1992 and 2017. Even worse, the rate of loss is accelerating.

The study (which was published on Wednesday in Nature) was conducted by members of the the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-Comparison Exercise, or IMBIE, a group of polar scientists seeking to provide a single, definitive estimate for ice loss in Antarctica. The ice in Antarctica altogether holds enough water to raise sea levels by a startling 58 metres, and so far the ice loss since 1992 has contributed to a rise of eight millimetres. By some estimates ice in Antarctica and Greenland accounts for approximately 20 percent of sea level increases. According to the IMBIE study, West Antarctica is losing the most ice at an accelerating rate, compared to the Antarctic Peninsula and East Antarctica.