Antarctic and Greenland Ice Melting More Quickly Than 30 Years Ago

According to a global research, Greenland and Antarctica’s ice is melting more quickly than it did roughly 30 years ago. The European Space Agency (ESA) and the U.S. space agency NASA collected 50 separate satellite estimates for the study. According to the experts involved, up until 2020—the latest year for which data was available—the pace of melting increased. Additionally, they claimed that the melting had raised the global sea level by an average of almost 21 millimeters. According to the study, between 2017 and 2020, there was 20% more melted Greenland ice than there was between 2012 and 2016. Furthermore, the melting exceeded seven times the annual melting from 1992 to 1996.

The latest findings “are pretty disastrous really,” according to Ruth Mottram, a Danish Meteorological Institute climate expert and study co-author. “The amount of ice coming from Greenland is decreasing.” Ines Otosaka is the study’s principal author. At the University of Leeds in Britain, she researches glaciers. She stated that it is evident that human-caused climate change is the reason of the rapid ice loss. 99 percent of all the ice on land is found in Greenland and Antarctica. According to the study, ice in the two regions melted at a rate of 105 billion metric tons annually between 1992 and 1996. Of that amount, Antarctica accounted for two thirds.

But from 2017 to 2020, the aggregate predicted melting jumped to 372 billion metric tons a year. According to a study published in the journal Earth System Science Data, more than two thirds of the melting occurred in Greenland. The study concluded that 7.6 trillion metric tons of ice have been lost from the two ice regions on Earth since 1992. That’s enough water to cover France by fifteen meters. However, the amount of ice that has melted since 1992 has only added less than 21 millimeters to global sea levels due to the size of the world’s oceans. Sea level increase was previously only five percent due to ice sheet melting. According to the survey, it now accounts for more than 25% of the increase.