The rate of ice melting on Earth has reached catastrophic rates, according to scientists at the University of Leeds in the UK. An article about large-scale climate changes was published in The Cryosphere.
Experts have studied the long-term state of 215 thousand mountain glaciers around the planet, the polar ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, ice shelves around Antarctica and drifting sea ice in the Arctic and Southern Oceans.
According to the findings of the researchers, between 1994 and 2017, the planet lost 28 trillion tons of ice, which is equivalent to a layer of ice 100 meters thick covering the whole of Great Britain. At the same time, the rate of melting has increased markedly over the past three decades: from 0.8 trillion tons per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tons per year by 2017.
Overall, over 23 years of observations, the rate of ice disappearance has increased by 65 percent due to its melting in Greenland and Antarctica. The Arctic ice and the Antarctic ice shelves were most affected. This is due to an increase in the average global temperature of the atmosphere and oceans, which have warmed 0.26 degrees Celsius and 0.12 degrees Celsius per decade since 1980, respectively. The warm atmosphere has the greatest impact (68 percent), with the rest due to the heating of seawater.
Half of all losses were due to ice on land, including 6.1 trillion tons in mountain glaciers, 3.8 trillion tons of the Greenland ice sheet and 2.5 trillion tons of Antarctic ice sheets. These losses have raised the sea level by 35 millimeters. Every extra centimeter of sea level threatens an additional million people living in coastal areas.
