Antarctic ice loss speeds up, nearly matches Greenland loss

Ice loss in Antarctica increased by 75 percent in the last 10 years due to a speed-up in the flow of its glaciers and is now nearly as great as that observed in Greenland, according to a new, comprehensive study by UC Irvine and NASA scientists. In a first-of-its-kind study, an international team led by Eric Rignot (pictured), professor of Earth system science at UCI and a scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, estimated changes in Antarctica’s ice mass between 1996 and 2006 and mapped patterns of ice loss on a glacier-by-glacier basis. They detected a sharp jump in Antarctica’s ice loss, from enough ice to raise global sea level by 0.3 millimeters (.01 inches) a year in 1996, to 0.5 millimeters (.02 inches) a year in 2006. Results of the study are published in February’s issue of Nature Geoscience