Antarctica Ice is melting 6 Times faster than it did in ’80s

Scientists warned on Monday that due to the increased rate of ice-melt in Antarctica, the worldwide sea-levels have risen to a new height. According to the report published in the US journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Antarctica melting has already raised the global sea-levels by more than 1.4 cm between the years 1979 and 2017. The reason for the six-time more melting of Antarctica ice than 40 years ago is global warming. It is the increasing effect of global warming which has contributed to the melting of Antarctica ice.

According to the lead author of the University of California, this is an alarming situation for the world. It is so because the melting of Antarctica ice is expected to reach 1.8 m (six feet) by 2100. And if this happens, then the coastal areas of the world would suffer disastrous floods. This would simply leave the destruction of the livelihood near the coastal areas.

“As the Antarctic ice sheet continues to melt away, we expect multi-meter sea level rise from Antarctica in the coming centuries,” Rignot said. Researchers are doing the assessment of Antarctica iceberg which spans over 18 geographical regions. According to the data received from the high-resolution aerial photographs taken by NASA planes as well as satellite radar from multiple space agencies, some unbelievable things come into notice.

If we believe the researched data then the Antarctica melting was 40 billion tons of ice-mass annually from 1979 to 1990. This increased by six-fold to 252 billion tons per year between the years 2009 to 2017. Even the places which were considered “stable and immune to change” have shed ice on a significant note.

“The Wilkes Land sector of East Antarctica has, overall, always been an important participant in the mass loss, even as far back as the 1980s, as our research has shown,” Rignot said.

“This region is probably more sensitive to climate than has traditionally been assumed, and that’s important to know, because it holds even more ice than West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula together.”