Satellite data reveal alarmingly rapid melting in Greenland and Antarctica

(CNN) – A new study reveals that Earth’s ice sheets have lost enough ice in the past 30 years to make an ice cube 12 miles high.

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which contain nearly all of the world’s freshwater ice, are shrinking at an alarmingly fast rate, according to a study. a report Published this Thursday by an international team of scientists.

By combining data from 50 satellite surveys of Antarctica and Greenland, spanning from 1992 to 2020, scientists with the Ice Sheet Equilibration Intermediate Comparison Exercise, or IMBIE, were able to track changes in the volume and flow of ice from the ice sheets.

They found that ice melt has increased six-fold in the past 30 years, as record levels of pollution from global warming have increased global temperatures.

The seven worst years of melting of the polar ice caps occurred in the past decade.

In total, the polar ice caps lost more than 8.3 trillion tons of ice between 1992 and 2020, according to the report.

The worst year for ice sheet loss was 2019, according to the report, when the ice sheets lost about 675 billion tons of ice. These losses were due to a heat wave in the Arctic, which caused the Greenland ice sheet to lose 489 billion tons.

According to the report, the loss of ice is having a significant impact on the oceans, raising sea levels by 21 millimeters (just under an inch). The melting of the ice sheet is responsible for a quarter of sea level rise, five times what it was in the 1990s.

“This is an enormous amount of ice,” Ines Otosaka, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Leeds, told CNN. “It’s very worrying, because 40% of the world’s population lives in coastal areas.”

The rate of melting in Antarctica is much faster than it was in the 1990s. Credit: Gallo Images / Orbital Horizon / Copernicus Sentinel Data / Getty Images

Scientists have found that the rate of melting of the Antarctic ice cap has slowed, but is still much faster than it was in the 1990s.

The report identified the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica, home to the turbulent Thwaites glacier, dubbed the “end of the world” glacier for its potentially devastating impact on sea level rise, as the regions where the bulk of the continent is melting.

Otosaka expects the Greenland ice sheet to continue losing ice, but said it’s not yet clear what might happen to the Antarctic ice sheet.

“In Antarctica we have more uncertainty in the future,” he said. “We have what we call some low-probability, high-impact mechanisms that could be triggered if we go beyond a certain level of warming.”

He added that this could lead to a significant rise in sea level in the future.

IMBIE Scholars will update their assessment each year. Credit: Sergio Petamez/VWPCS/AP

According to Otosaka, if the world reaches certain warming thresholds, important and potentially irreversible feedback mechanisms can be triggered.

“We really need strong government policies to limit future warming and reduce our concentration of greenhouse gases,” he added.

“There is no doubt that climate change is causing the melting of the polar ice caps, raising sea levels, and endangering coastal regions around the world,” the European Space Agency, which is helping with NASA fund IMBIE research, said in a statement.

IMBIE scholars plan to update the assessment each year.

“We’re finally at the point where we can continually update our assessments of the mass balance of ice sheets that there are enough satellites in space monitoring them that people can benefit from our findings right away.” Professor at Northumbria University and founder of IMBIE, said in a statement.