New Scientist - E. Antarctic Ice Sheet - Thought Last Stable Region - Negative Mass Balance Since 06

[hatrack]

We thought it was one of the Earth's last remaining regions of stable ice. Now it seems the East Antarctic ice sheet has been losing mass since 2006 and could become a significant source of sea level rise, according to data from gravity-measuring satellites.

Previous studies have suggested that the ice sheet was either stable or even gaining ice mass. Now satellite measurements analysed by Jianli Chen of the Center for Space Research at the University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues suggest that the East Antarctic ice sheet is losing at least 5 billion tonnes of mass each year. "This paper provides the most accurate measurements to date of the current rate of mass loss from Antarctica," says Eric Steig, a glaciologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.


In 2002, NASA launched a pair of satellites called GRACE that measure how Earth's gravity field changes over time, as the mass of ice at the poles changes and water moves around the oceans. Chen's team used the satellites' data to estimate and map changes in ice abundance in Antarctica between 2002 and 2009.

"We've used the best available data set and the most up-to-date models to provide the most accurate estimates yet of ice loss in Antarctica," says Clark Wilson, a co-author at the Center for Space Research.
The team found that East Antarctica has been losing at least 5 billion tonnes of ice every year since 2006. They think the actual figure could be 57 billion tonnes per yea

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18191-worlds-last-bastion-of-stable-ice-now-thawing.html

[sudopod]

1. It's Ok, we'll shore them up with emails.

Emails are less dense than water, so they'll float, too!

[joshcryer]

2. Remember when we set the 2.0C target? As if 2.0C would prevent this sort of stuff?

I do. It was absurd to just pick a number and pretend it was meaningful, especially when we new so little about dynamical ice flow.

[bhikkhu]

3. That's actually scarier than most climate change news

as it shows the region we were least worried about to be melting off during a time period cooler than models predicted.

The few meters of sea level rise we are predicted to have by 2100 assumes that East Antarctica is stable and we lose Greenland and miscellaneous inland glacier systems; a worst case scenario in East Antarctica is capable of giving us a 50-60 meter sea level rise, which is virtually "game over".

[GliderGuider]

4. +1

:-(

[joshcryer]

6. Yep, when I read this news that was my first thought. "Our models were wrong..."

"...wrong in a bad way."

I mean the whole damn world set the 2.0C target as some sort of arbitrary baseline, now it looks like they'll move the goalposts to 3.0C or even possibly 4.0C.

That's simply not enough.

[kestrel91316]

8. I am still laughing at how "West" Antarctica is going to melt, then "East"

Antarctica is going to melt, but people blithely assume that the great bulk of Antarctica will NOT melt. Guess what? It's ALL going to melt. And I am no longer willing to bet that I won't see it (I am 52).

[pscot]

5. Rust never sleeps

Happy thanksgiving, Hatrack.

[kestrel91316]

7. Wow, I'm so relieved that those hacked emails contained the word "trick".

We can safely ignore all this melting, because climate change is a hoax.

:crazy:

[Quantess]

9. I just watched An Inconvenient Truth for the first time.

Finally.
:kick:

[Odin2005]

10. But the Denialists said the EAIS was growing!

:sarcasm: