Climate change: the thaw in the deep South

It thaws in the shadows. Hundreds of meters below the surface of the Antarctic ice, where the Inland ice pushes out to sea, eating warm deep water of the glaciers. The Eisverlust on the coast, huge amounts of snow are falling on the inland glaciers, and to condense new ice. However, the balance is no longer balanced for a long time. The rate of loss of Antarctic ice has accelerated in the last four decades, dramatically, during the snow supply remained more or less the same.

this is the result of researchers Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, currently in a study published in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”. To do this, use satellite data for estimation of the flow velocities of the glacier, which can be up to several kilometers per year. Because Rignot and his colleagues took the trouble of Hand-the old photos of early Landsat satellite missions to evaluate, start your time series in 1979, which was around a decade earlier than similar surveys. Their study covers 176 glacier almost pool the entire Antarctic continent. The findings are clear.