West Antarctic Glacial Loss Is Rapidly Intensifying, New Study Shows

Six massive glaciers in West Antarctica are dumping far more ice into the Southern Ocean than they were 40
Pine Island Glacier
NASA
An 18-mile crack in the Pine Island Glacier
years ago and now account for 10 percent of the world’s sea level rise, according to a new study. Reporting in Geophysical Research Letters, an international team of scientists said that the amount of ice draining from the six glaciers has increased by 77 percent since 1973. The scientists said that the ice loss from the six glaciers is so substantial that it equals the amount of ice draining annually from the entire Greenland Ice Sheet. The scientists used satellite data from 1973 and 2013 to gauge the ice loss from the six glaciers. The Pine Island Glacier is moving more rapidly to the sea than any of the other six, with its speed increasing from 1.5 miles per year in 1973 to 2.5 miles per year in 2013. The glaciers are dumping more ice into the sea primarily because warmer ocean waters are loosening the ice sheets’ hold on the sea floor, which speeds up glacial flow.