For prominent leaders of the world, climate change is not real. Some compared climate with weather and some ridiculed the claim and said that the tendency to tolerate temperature has reduced. In a recent study, it is found that the ice cover on Antarctica is shrinking 6 times faster than it was 40 years before.
The recent melting rate is 15 percent higher than what a study found last year.
Since 2009, Antarctica has lost almost 278 billion tons (252 billion metric tons) of ice per year, the new study found. In the 1980s, it was losing 44 billion tons (40 billion metric tons) a year.
Eric Rignot, a University of California, Irvine, ice scientist, was the lead author on the new study in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He said the big difference is that his satellite-based study found East Antarctica, which used to be considered stable, is losing 56 billion tons (51 billion metric tons) of ice a year. Last year’s study, which took several teams’ work into consideration, found little to no loss in East Antarctica recently and gains in the past.
Melting in West Antarctica and the Antarctica Peninsula account for about four-fifths of the ice loss. East Antarctica’s melting “increases the risk of multiple meter (more than 10 feet) sea level rise over the next century or so,” Rignot said.
It doesn’t require anyone to have a PhD for understanding that climate change is real. The depleting ice cover would mean a rise in sea level. This would lead to submerging of low lying lands. The countdown has now begun.