Antarctica's ice sheet is losing twice as much ice as it was when it was last surveyed three years ago.
Researchers produced the first "complete assessment of Antarctic ice sheet elevation change" using measurements from the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 satellite mission, a University of Leeds news release reported.
The team found that the ice sheet is losing 159 billion tons of ice every year, twice as much as it was during the last survey.
The melting ice sheets contribute to sea level rise; at this rate they could raise the oceans by 0.45 millimeters in just one year.
This new thorough investigation has uncovered even more areas that could contribute to sea level rise. The team found the sector is losing about one third more ice than it did between 2005 and 2010 before CryoSat-2 was launched.
"We find that ice losses continue to be most pronounced along the fast-flowing ice streams of the Amundsen Sea sector, with thinning rates of between [four and eight meters] per year near to the grounding lines of the Pine Island, Thwaites and Smith Glaciers," Lead author Docctor Malcolm McMillan from the University of Leeds said in the news release.
This section of Antarctica is believed to be the most sensitive to climate change.
"Thanks to its novel instrument design and to its near-polar orbit, CryoSat allows us to survey coastal and high-latitude regions of Antarctica that were beyond the capability of past altimeter missions, and it seems that these regions are crucial for determining the overall imbalance," study leader Professor Andrew Shepherd, also of the University of Leeds, said in the news release.
"Although we are fortunate to now have, in CryoSat-2, a routine capability to monitor the polar ice sheets, the increased thinning we have detected in West Antarctica is a worrying development. It adds concrete evidence that dramatic changes are underway in this part of our planet, which has enough ice to raise global sea levels by more than a [meter]. The challenge is to use this evidence to test and improve the predictive skill of climate models," he said.
