A large-scale study, which lasted from 1979 to 2017, clearly demonstrated the increasing melting of Antarctica.
A team of researchers from the University of California at Irvine, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Utrecht have studied the melting ice of Antarctica for nearly 40 years and have now released data that show an increase in the rate every ten years. The work was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Experts call their study the longest-term estimate of the remaining mass of Antarctic ice. From 1979 to 2017, they tracked 18 regions that include 176 basins and adjacent islands. Experts measured the thickness of the ice and its speed, compared the accumulation of mass from snowfalls in inland water bodies with the volume of breaking ice at the base. The data was obtained thanks to NASA's ongoing mission - Operation IceBridge, which uses ICESat and ICESat-2 satellites, as well as satellites of the Landsat program, which started back in 1972.
Analysis of the data obtained showed that from 1979 to 1990, Antarctica lost an average of 40 gigatons of ice per year (1 gigaton - 1 billion tons). From 1989 to 2000 - 166 gigatons. In the period from 2009 to 2017, this figure increased to 252 gigatons.
Indicators of the ice mass of Antarctica, obtained using the component method / Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
One of the study leaders, Eric Rignot, said the eastern region was the largest contributor to ice loss:
“Wilkes Land - the eastern sector of Antarctica - has always had a big impact on mass loss, even in the 80s - we talk about this in our work. The region may be more vulnerable to climate change than we previously thought. This is important information as the eastern sector contains more ice than the western and northern sectors combined."
Earlier, a group of scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, a government organization of Great Britain, conducted a study of the land under the Antarctic ice sheet and found that its eastern part, in addition to global warming, is melted from the inside by geothermal flows.
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Alexey Evglevsky