December 12, 2018

A new melting disaster in Antarctica

Eco Watch -Ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica have been melting at alarming rates in recent years, but at least the glaciers of East Antarctica were believed to be relatively stable. Until now. National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists have discovered that glaciers covering one-eighth of Antarctica's eastern coast have lost ice in the past 10 years. If the region keeps melting, it has enough ice in its drainage basins to add 28 meters (approximately 92 feet) to global sea level rise, BBC News reported.

"That's the water equivalent to four Greenlands of ice," Catherine Walker from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who presented the new findings at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union , told BBC News.

2 comments:

Tom Puckett said...

All this melting may have some side benefits. The 12,800 years ago comet fragment impact crater has been discovered by NASA in Greenland:

http://glacierhub.org/2018/12/12/massive-impact-crater-discovered-beneath-greenland-glacier/

Take the time to watch the Jimmy Bright Insight video on the implications of the 19-mile wide crater from this one-mile wide chunk of iron's impact on the north american ice shelf...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMTTFLiOwX0

Cheers, Tom

Unknown said...

Dear Puckett: Your reference to "side benefits" omits one very pleasurable one: deeper swimming pools for all on the high plateaux. Sir, you fiddle while the New Rome drowns.