WEST ANTARCTICA ICE DECREASES

Abstract

WEST ANTARCTICA and the Antarctic Peninsula appear to be losing vast amounts of ice, and that loss is accelerating, researchers reported on Jan. 13 in an article published online in Nature Geoscience (DOI: 10.1038/ngeo102). Their findings contrast sharply with estimates in the latest report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predicted that the ice in Antarctica is likely to remain stable or increase over the course of the 21st century. Eric Rignot, professor of earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues analyzed satellite data and computer simulations of snow accumulation during the decade from 1996 to 2006. They found that West Antarctica lost about 132 billion metric tons of ice in 2006, compared with about 83 billion metric tons in 1996, and that the Antarctic Peninsula lost 60 billion metric tons in 2006. “To put these figures in perspective, 4 billion metric tons of ice ...