Antarctica's Ice Sheet is Melting Faster Than Ever, Revealed with New Gravity Data

It turns out that the Antarctic ice sheet is melting faster than ever. Researchers have "weighed" Antarctica's ice sheet using gravitational satellite data and have found that during the past decade, Antarctica's ice sheet lost twice the amount of ice in its western portion compared with what it accumulated in the east.

In order to "weight" Antarctica's ice sheet, the researchers used gravitational satellite data. They found that from 2003 to 2014, the ice sheet lost 92 billion tons of ice per year. If stacked on the island of Manhattan, that ice would be more than a mile high.

Since 2008, the ice loss from West Antarctica's glaciers doubled  from an average loss of 121 billion tons of ice to twice that by 2014. During the same time, the ice sheet on East Antarctica thickened during that same time, but only accumulated half the amount of ice lost from the west.

"We have a solution that is very solid, very detailed and unambiguous," said Frederick Simons, one of the researchers, in a news release. "A decade of gravity analysis alone cannot force you to take a position on this ice loss being due to anthropogenic global warming. All we have done is take the balance of the ice on Antarctica and found that it is melting-there is no doubt. But with the rapidly accelerating rates at which the ice is melting, and in the light of the other, well-publicized lines of evidence, most scientists would be hard pressed to find mechanisms that do not include human-made climate change."

In Antarctica, the ocean currents rather than the air are what melt the ice. This melted ice then contributes to higher sea levels. These findings are particularly important to note as temperatures warm. It's obvious that the ice is melting, and that melt is accelerating.

The findings are published in the journal Planetary Science Letters.

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