Accelerated Ice Sheet Melt At Both Poles Documented in Study

The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are losing three to five times as much ice annually as they did two decades ago, a rate of ice loss equivalent to sea level rise of 0.04 inches per year, according to a new study supported by NASA and the European Space Agency. In an analysis of data from 10 different satellite missions, the international team of 47 experts calculated that the rate of melt in Greenland is five times greater than during the mid-1990s. While the new findings on total ice loss fall within the range produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, the new study provides a more definitive assessment that Antarctica’s ice sheets, like Greenland’s, are shrinking. Combined, these ice sheets have added .44 inches (11.1 millimeters) to sea levels worldwide since 1992, accounting for about 20 percent of total sea-level rise during that period. “This will give the wider climate science community greater confidence in ice losses and lead to improved predictions of future sea-level rise,” said Andrew Shepherd, a scientist at the University of Leeds and co-leader of the study, which is published in the journal Science.