Earth's ice loss increases at record speed, study says

Earth has lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice between 1994 and 2017 according to a study which reveals that the rate at which ice is disappearing across the planet is speeding upThe research published on Monday in The Cryosphere journal found that the rate of ice loss from the Earth has increased markedly within the past three decades from 08 trillion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 13 trillion tonnes per year by 2017The team led by researchers at the University of Leeds in the UK is the first to carry out a survey of global ice loss using satellite dataThe researchers noted that ice melt across the globe raises sea levels increases the risk of flooding to coastal communities and threatens to wipe out natural habitats which the wildlife depends onThe study shows that overall there has been a 65 per cent increase in the rate of ice loss over the 23year surveyThis has been mainly driven by steep rise in losses from the polar ice sheets in Antarctica and GreenlandAlthough every region we studied lost ice losses from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated the most said lead author Thomas Slater a Research Fellow at Leeds UniversityThe ice sheets are now following the worstcase climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sealevel rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century Slater saidThe researchers noted that the increase in ice loss has been triggered by warming of the atmosphere and oceans which have warmed by 026 and 012 degrees Celsius per decade since the 1980 respectivelyThe majority of all ice loss was driven by atmospheric melting 68 per cent with the remaining losses 32 per cent being driven by oceanic melting they saidThe survey covers 215000 mountain glaciers spread around the planet the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica the ice shelves floating around Antarctica and sea ice drifting in the Arctic and Southern OceansRising atmospheric temperatures have been the main driver of the decline in Arctic sea ice and mountain glaciers across the globe while rising ocean temperatures have increased the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet according to the researchersFor the Greenland ice sheet and Antarctic ice shelves ice losses have been triggered by a combination of rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures they said During the survey period every category lost ice but the biggest losses were from Arctic Sea ice 76 trillion tonnes and Antarctic ice shelves 65 trillion tonnes both of which float on the polar oceansSea ice loss doesnt contribute directly to sea level rise but it does have an indirect influence One of the key roles of Arctic sea ice is to reflect solar radiation back into space which helps keep the Arctic cool said Isobel Lawrence a Research Fellow at LeedsAs the sea ice shrinks more solar energy is being absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet Lawrence added