An analysis of dozens of studies on polar ice has yielded the most accurate estimate yet of ice-sheet melting. Between them, Antarctica and Greenland are now losing mass three times faster than they were 20 years ago, and Greenland alone is shedding ice at about five times the rate it was in the mid-1990s.
Previous melting estimates have been inconsistent. To address this uncertainty, Andrew Shepherd at the University of Leeds, UK, Erik Ivins at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and their colleagues compared and combined four types of satellite data on ice-sheet mass. They found that, since 1992, the ice sheets have contributed more than 11 millimetres to sea-level rise — one-fifth of the total for that period.
The authors say that their estimates are two to three times more accurate than those from the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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Ever faster polar ice loss. Nature 492, 11 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/492011c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/492011c
