The rate of ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica is currently on track with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s worst-case climate warming scenario, according to a new study published in the journal Nature today [11 March].
The authors - comprising an international team of polar researchers, including several scientists working on ESA's Climate Change initiative Ice Sheet projects - compared and combined data from 11 satellites – including ESA’s ERS-1, ERS-2, Envisat and CryoSat missions, as well as the EU’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 missions – to monitor changes in the ice sheet’s volume, flow and gravity.
The study finds that:
- Greenland and Antarctica lost 6.4 trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017 – pushing global sea levels up by 17.8 millimetres.
- The combined rate of ice loss has risen by a factor of six in just three decades (since the 1990s)
- Polar ice sheets are now responsible for a third of all sea level rise.
For the full story visit esa.int
Caption: Antarctica and Greenland’s contribution to sea level change
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