A recent article posted by CNN claims that western Antarctica is melting rapidly and can’t be stopped, due to human-caused global warming, which will result in a dangerous rise ocean levels. This is false.
Antarctic ice shelves incurred significant ice loss between 1997 and 2001. Click to read more. Antarctica is a vast icy continent containing massive chunks of ice because of a prehistoric glaciation, which scientists predict to have taken place approximately 35 million years ago.
Antarctic ice shelves have experienced only minor changes in surface melt rates over the past four decades, unlike the rapid increase in surface melt experienced by Greenland's glaciers during the same time period.
Our observations show that Antarctic ice shelves gained 661 Gt of ice mass over the past decade, whereas the steady-state approach would estimate substantial ice loss over the same period, demonstrating the importance of using time-variable calving flux observations to measure change.