Ice loss from Antarctica is accelerating, warns study

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Agencies

Posted online: Sunday , January 13, 2008 at 06:51:08
Updated: Sunday , January 13, 2008 at 07:06:18

Paris, January 13: Global warming has caused annual ice loss from the Antarctic ice sheet to surge by 75 per cent in a decade, according to the most detailed survey ever made of the white continent's coastal glaciers.

In 2006, accelerating glaciers spewed an estimated 192 billion tonnes of Antarctic ice into the sea, scientists calculate.

The West Antarctica ice sheet lost some 132 billion tonnes, while the Antarctic Peninsula, the tongue of land that juts up towards South America, lost around 60 million tonnes.

But there was a "near-zero" loss in East Antarctica, the world's biggest icesheet, the paper says.

Investigators from five countries, led by Eric Rignot of NASA's fabled Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), used interferometry radar from four satellites to build a picture of the periphery of Antarctica.

They sought to measure the velocities of glaciers that shift ice to the coast from the massive sheets that cover Antarctica's bedrock.

They built up a picture of around 85 per cent of Antarctica's coastline thanks to the data supplied by the European Space Agency's two Earth Remoting Sensing (ERS) satellites, the Canadian Radarsat-1 and Japan's Advanced Land Observing satellites.

"Over the time period of our survey, the ice sheet as a whole was certainly losing mass, and the mass loss increased by 75 per cent in 10 years," according to the study, published online by the specialist journal Nature Geoscience.

"Most of the mass loss is from the Pine Island Bay sector of West Antarctica and the northern tip of the Peninsula, where it is driven by ongoing, pronounced glacier acceleration.

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ice loss from antarctica is accelerating warns study by b.venkataramasastry on 14 Jan 2008

dear respected sirs/madams,it is most serious and alarming report.mind gets perplexed and paralysed and do not know what to do.we pray GOD the ALMIGHTY to bestow wisdom on the powers who should act without loss of time in the proper direction to save our dearest earth with all her dearest children of the present and future at the earliest--LONG LIVE O MOTHER OUR DEAREST EARTH WITH HER DEAREST CHILDREN WITH ALL THE PROSPERITY---b.venkataramasastry(one of her dearest sons)

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