Archive for March 2011

Polar ice loss quickens, raising seas

A report on the BBC News website, from research shown in Geophysical Research Letters, says that ice loss from Greenland and Antartica has accelerated over the last 20 years.

Between them, Greenland and Antartica were losing 475 BILLION tonnes of ice per year by 2006, but the average loss from Greenland is increasing by 22 billion tonnes a year, and that from Antartica an additional 14.5 billion tonnes a year.

If these increases carry on, sea levels could rise by 15cm by 2050 due to melted ice from the polar ice sheets.

(A combination of melt water from mountain glaciers and thermal expansion of sea water could see an additional similar rise.)

Projecting this forward to 2100, sea levels could rise by 56cm just by the ice melting from the two polar caps.

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