Two new studies led by UC Irvine using data from NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites show that civilization is rapidly draining some of its largest groundwater basins, yet there is little to no accurate data about how much water remains in them. The result is that significant segments of Earth’s population are consuming groundwater quickly without knowing when …
Part of Antarctica has begun thawing unusually fast, leaving scientists unsure whether a natural cycle or human-caused climate change is responsible. By Tim Radford
Antarctic glaciers once thought relatively stable are starting to melt. Evidence from a five-year satellite study of the frozen rivers on the southern Antarctic Peninsula now reveal that these are shedding ice at the rate of 60 cubic kilometres a year: altogether around 300 trillion litres of water has moved from the frozen continent to the oceans. Bert Wouters of …
Sudden onset of ice loss in Antarctica so large it affects Earth’s gravity field
A group of scientists, led by a team from the University of Bristol, UK has observed a sudden increase of ice loss in a previously stable region of Antarctica. The research is published today in Science. Using measurements of the elevation of the Antarctic ice sheet made by a suite of satellites, the researchers found that the Southern Antarctic Peninsula showed …
ANTARCTICA IS MELTING FASTER THAN EVER BEFORE A MASSIVE MELTING PROBLEM – Mary Beth Griggs
Study after study shows that Antarctica isn’t in great shape. Its ice shelves are disappearing and its ice sheets are collapsing, hastening swiftly rising sea levels. Sounds terrible. But just in case you wanted a second opinion, a new study out of Princeton University takes a look at a decade’s worth of satellite data. Their results, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, show that not only …
Gravity data show that Antarctic ice sheet is melting increasingly faster
During the past decade, Antarctica’s massive ice sheet lost twice the amount of ice in its western portion compared with what it accumulated in the east, according to Princeton University researchers who came to one overall conclusion — the southern continent’s ice cap is melting ever faster. The researchers “weighed” Antarctica’s ice sheet using gravitational satellite data and found that …