Twin Satellites Reveal Shrinking Antarctic Ice Sheet

[PhilipShore]

Environment News Service
Twin Satellites Reveal Shrinking Antarctic Ice Sheet
March 3, 2006

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2006/2006-03-03-03.asp

BOULDER, Colorado, March 3, 2006 (ENS) - The Antarctic ice sheet, which contains 90 percent of the planet's ice, has lost significant mass in the past three years, according to satellite data analyzed in the first-ever gravity survey of the entire Antarctic ice sheet.

Isabella Velicogna and John Wahr, both from the University of Colorado, Boulder, conducted the study. They used measurements taken by twin satellites that are part of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, to conclude the Antarctic ice sheet is losing up to 36 cubic miles of ice, or 152 cubic kilometers, annually.

By comparison, that is about how much water the United States consumes in three months.

"This is the first study to indicate the total mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet is in significant decline," said Velicogna of CU-Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, chief author of the new study that appears in the March 2 online issue of "Science Express."

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