Thanks to observations made over more than three years by ESA’s CryoSat satellite, scientists have been able to verify that Antarctica is losing more and more ice water. According to the data, the frozen continent would be losing more than 150 cubic kilometers of ice every 365 days, much more than estimated in the last measurement.
Sea level depends directly on the amount of ice accumulated at the poles . The melting and the loss of frozen mass directly affects the sea level and the loss of emerged land. Recently an international team of scientists had determined that the loss of ice in western Antarctica had caused the sea level to rise by 0.28 mm each year between 2005 and 2010 . However, this new measurement by Cryosat suggests that the contribution of melting in this particular area to sea level rise is 15 percent higher than previously believed.
As explained by Dr Malcom McMillan of the University of Leeds, UK, “We have seen that the thinning of the ice remains more pronounced in the fast-flowing ice currents of this sector [the glaciers that flow into the Amundsen Sea ] and its tributaries, with thinning rates of 4-8 meters per year, near the land contact lines of Pine Island, Thwaites and Smith Glaciers.
CryoSat was launched in 2010 and allows to study some parameters impossible until now. Thanks to its innovative design and near-polar orbit, it allows the examination of the coastal and high-latitude regions of Antarctica, crucial areas for determining the imbalance of the frozen surface .
