and antarctic ice sheets are expanding. What's your point moron?
Now, idiot child, don't bust a gasket. The Antarctic Sea Ice is expanding in the winter, and melting off in the summer. The Antarctic Ice Cap is losing ice by the giga-ton every year now, both from Western Antarctica, and, also, from Eastern Antarctica.
Climate Feedback: Is east Antarctic ice melting?
Is east Antarctic ice melting?
Daniel Cressey; cross-posted from The Great Beyond
The ice sheet covering east Antarctica may have been melting since 2006, according to new research, contradicting previous suggestions that it has remained stable or even grown in mass.
Using measurements for 2002 to 2009 from a twin pair of satellites, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas, say east Antarctica is losing mass at about 58 gigatonnes a year. Most of the loss appears to be from coastal regions and to stem from increased ice loss post 2006.
Previous studies have generally used satellites to measure elevation or movement of ice. The new study - published in Nature Geoscience - instead looks at the EarthÂ’s gravity field and uses that to work out how much ice is there. It also suggests that 132 Gt of the total annual ice loss of 190 Gt per year is coming from the west.
Although there are uncertainties in the data, the new estimates of ice loss are on average consistent with previous calculations, “but, in contrast to previous estimates, they indicate that as a whole, Antarctica may soon be contributing significantly more to global sea-level rise”, the researchers write in their paper.
