Antarctica Loses Ice From East as Well as West, Scientists Say

[phantom power]

Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Antarctica is losing ice from its larger eastern side as well as the western part, an indication the southernmost continent may add “significantly more” to rising seas, researchers in Texas said.

The eastern sheet lost ice at a rate of about 57 billion metric tons a year from 2002 to 2009, contributing to the continent’s total annual average loss of about 190 billion tons, scientists at the University of Texas at Austin said in the journal Nature Geoscience.

United Nations scientists in 2007 said most of Antarctica’s contribution to rising sea levels amid global warming comes from the western sheet, with the eastern part either holding steady or gaining mass. The latest findings for East Antarctica are “surprising” because they differ from other estimates, said glaciologist Jonathan Bamber, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“I’m surprised because other studies for slightly different time periods have come up with values that are very close to zero,” Bamber, professor of physical geography at the University of Bristol in England, said in a telephone interview. “This result really confirms that there are very substantial inconsistencies between different estimates.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=atJRfSKS0cOA

[Triana]

1. And STILL the US pitters, and putters and stutters and REFUSES to cooperate.....

..HOW MUCH TIME do the MORONS think we HAVE? Do they think this WON'T affect THEM too?

Ignorance.
Laziness.
Lack of political will.
GREED.

Gonna do us in. And your children too. AND theirs. Not that anyone gives a crap.

[JohnWxy]

2. Even though people say they accept Global Warming is a reality I still do not think people

appreciate that even if we dramatically reduced our GHG emissions TOMORROW, it would still take a very long time to start turning things around. The increasing rate at which land based ice is moving off the land into the sea in particular, concerns me.

[joshcryer]

3. I honestly think the belief in human adaptation is the real driver here.

Slow adaptation to sea level rise, deal with the population displacement, deal with the food shortages, etc. It's unfortunate. Prevention is always better.

edit, wording

[Nihil]

4. I think it is more like ...

... "It's only going to affect some foreigners somewhere, not us."

:shrug:

[joshcryer]

6. Too bad people are too ignorant to realize that their seafront property is going to be worthless.

Being that it'll be underwater and all.

[joshcryer]

5. Link to paper here:

www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ngeo694.html

Our results suggest that over the WAIS (especially the ASE) there is accelerated ice loss since around 2005 and/or 2006, with the EAIS showing correlated changes of the same sign in this period, attributed to increased ice loss over EAIS coastal regions in recent years. Using a simple linear projection for the period 2006-2009, Antarctic ice loss rate can be as large as 220 +/- 89 Gt yr-^1 (see Supplementary Information for details). These new GRACE estimates, on average, are consistent with recent InSAR fluxes but, in contrast to previous estimates, they indicate that as a whole, Antarctica may soon be contributing significantly more to global sea-level rise. More discussion of the results and analysis of uncertainty and variable ice loss rates are provided in the Supplementary Information.