For decades, the ice shelf helping to hold back one of the fastest-moving glaciers in Antarctica – Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica – has gradually.
The Pine Island ice shelf - located on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet - has been known to have been thinning now for decades as a result of climate change.
The Acceleration of an Antarctic Glacier Shows How Global Warming Can Rapidly Break Up Polar Ice and Raise Sea Level insideclimatenews.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from insideclimatenews.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Glaciers in West Antarctica are Moving Faster from Land into Ocean
Written by AZoCleantechFeb 24 2021
A new study reports that glaciers in West Antarctica are moving into the ocean from land faster than ever, leading to increasing global sea levels.
Image Credit: robert mcgillivray/Shutterstock.com
Researchers used a 25-year record of satellite observations to demonstrate, for the first time, wide-ranging increases in ice speed throughout the Getz sector, where some portion of ice accelerated into the ocean by almost 50%.
Led by the University of Leeds, the study describes that in the Getz region, 14 glaciers are thinning and flowing faster than ever into the ocean. From 1994 to 2018, 315 gigatonnes of ice had been lost, increasing the global mean sea level by 0.9 mm, which is equivalent to 126 million Olympic swimming pools of water.