Ice loss in Antarctica increased by 75 percent in the last 10 years due to a speed-up in the flow ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ its glaciers and is now nearly as great as that observed in Greenland, according to a new, comprehensive study by NASA and university scientists.
In a first-************SPAM/BANNEAR************-its-kind study, an international team led by Eric Rignot ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ California, Irvine, estimated changes in Antarctica's ice mass between 1996 and 2006 and mapped patterns ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ ice loss on a glacier-by-glacier basis. They detected a sharp jump in Antarctica's ice loss, from enough ice to raise global sea level by 0.3 millimeters (.01 inches) a year in 1996, to 0.5 millimeters (.02 inches) a year in 2006.
Rignot said the losses, which were primarily concentrated in West Antarctica's Pine Island Bay sector and the northern tip ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ the Antarctic Peninsula, are caused by ongoing and past acceleration ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ glaciers into the sea. This is mostly a result ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ warmer ocean waters, which bathe the buttressing floating sections ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ glaciers, causing them to thin or collapse. "Changes in Antarctic glacier flow are having a significant, if not dominant, impact on the mass balance ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ the Antarctic ice sheet," he said.
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