Antarctica and Greenland have lost more than 5,000 gigatons of ice in the last 16 years, according to results from a new NASA mission. That's enough to fill Lake Michigan.
The mission is also shedding light on what's driving the melting. Antarctica's ice, now sitting on land, makes a slow progression to the ocean. When it reaches the coast, it floats, creating ice shelves skirting around the continent. Those shelves are natural barriers that slow the rate of ice loss, but as they melt in a warming ocean, that barrier is shrinking.
"It's like an apple tart and the ice shelves are like the wall of pastry around the edges of the tart," says Fricker."And if those walls are too thin or they're not baked well enough, then the filling will ooze out." Warmer air temperatures around Greenland are directly melting its ice, as well as causing ice to calve off into the ocean. Greenland holds enough ice to raise global sea levels as much as 23 feet andCombined, melting ice from both places has caused about half an inch of sea level rise, around a third of what's been seen over the 16-year period. Sea levels are also rising because warmer water expands.
With ICESat-2 still circling the planet, scientists say it will continue to provide crucial information, helping refine their understanding of how the planet is changing. "We've all been waiting for this new dataset," Bell said."Our goal is to be able to tell every coastal community what they can plan on [in] the coming decades. To be able to do that, we both need to measure how the ice is changing but also understand better why it's changing."
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