Scientists Count Huge Melts In Many Protective Antarctic Ice Shelves, Trillions Of Tons Of Ice Lost
FILE - This Nov. 10, 2016 photo released by NASA, shows a rift in the Antarctic Peninsula's Larsen C ice shelf. Dozens of Antarctica’s ice shelves, floating extensions of glaciers, showed significant shrinking between 1997 and 2021, a study published Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023, found. (John Sonntag/NASA via AP, File)
(Associated Press) – A new study finds that four dozen Antarctic ice shelves have shrunk by at least 30% since 1997 and 28 of those have lost more than half of their ice in that time.
These are the crucial “gatekeepers’’ between the frozen continent’s massive glaciers and the open ocean.
Thursday’s study finds that of the continent’s 162 ice shelves, 68 of them show significant shrinking trends between 1997 and 2021, while 29 grew, 62 didn’t change and three lost mass but not in a way that scientists can say shows a significant trend.
Scientists are concerned about sea level rise from large Antarctic melting.
