Annual Average Ice Mass Loss For Alaskan Glaciers; 48 Billion Tons; State #3 In Sea-Level Rise
Alaska glaciers have been shedding about 46 billion tons of ice each year, making America's Arctic state the world's single biggest contributor to glacier-fed sea level rise outside of Greenland or Antarctica, say new estimates published this week in the online edition of the journal of Nature.
Still, Alaska remains a wee player in the global ice frappe, producing only about 8.5 percent of the world's annual glacier shrinkage of 526 billion tons, according to the study, led by a team at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The total mass ice loss from Greenland, Antarctica combined with all of Earth's other glaciers and ice caps amounted to about 1,000 cubic miles -- about eight times the water volume of Lake Erie, explained UC-Boulder physicist John Wahr in this story about the work.
"The total amount of ice lost to Earth's oceans from 2003 to 2010 would cover the entire United States in about 1 and one-half feet of water," added Wahr, a fellow at the CU-headquartered Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
EDIT
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/alaska-glaciers-losing-46-billion-tons-ice-each-year
