news agency Reuters AccordingA series of rapid ice melts has doubled previous estimates of the damage caused by the melting of the world’s largest ice sheet over the past 25 years, a satellite analysis showed on Wednesday. A first-of-its-kind study led by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has shown how rapidly climate change is weakening Antarctica’s giant blocks of floating ice and causing a tremendous rise in sea level, according to the report. is increasing.
The study finds that the mass of Antarctica’s ice caps has decreased by 12 trillion tons since 1997, twice as much as previous estimates, due to thinning glaciers and breaking up of ice caps.
According to JPL scientist Chad Greene, the study’s lead author, the loss of the continent’s ice sheet over the past quarter-century to the breakaway of the blocks is about 37,000 square km (14,300 sq mi), which is roughly the size of Switzerland. is the area of
“Antarctica is crumbling on its shores,” Green said in announcing NASA’s findings, “and while the ice caps shrink and weaken, the continent’s vast glaciers grow faster and the rate of global sea level rise increases.” grow in.”
The consequences can be dire. He said that Antarctica holds 88 per cent of the sea level capacity of all the world’s ice.
Ice caps, which are permanent floating sheets of frozen freshwater and attached to land, take thousands of years to form, which hold back glaciers that would otherwise simply collapse into the sea, raising sea levels. Will get up