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Mass gains of Antarctic ice sheet greater than losses: U.S. study

Xinhua, October 31, 2015 Adjust font size:

An increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers, according to a study conducted by the U.S. space agency NASA.

"The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice," NASA said in a statement.

According to Jay Zwally, the lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology, the new research is essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica. But the main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica, where researchers see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.

Scientists analyzed changes in the surface height of the Antarctic ice sheet measured by radar altimeters on two European Space Agency European Remote Sensing (ERS) satellites, spanning from 1992 to 2001, and by the laser altimeter on NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) from 2003 to 2008.

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

"The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away," Zwally said."But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for." Endi