ANTARCTIC ICE MELTING FASTED THAN THOUGHT

Independent, UK - The East Antarctic ice sheet, once seen as largely unaffected by global warming, has lost billions of tons of ice since 2006 and could boost sea levels in the future, according to a new study.

Published in Nature Geoscience, the same study shows that the smaller but less stable West Antarctic ice sheet is also shedding significant mass.

Scientists worry that rising global temperatures could trigger a rapid disintegration of West Antarctica, which holds enough frozen water to push up the global ocean watermark by about five meters (16 feet).

In 2007 the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) predicted sea levels would rise 18 to 59 centimeters (7.2 to 23.2 inches) by 2100, but this estimate did not factor in the potential impact of crumbling ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

Today many of the same scientist say that even if heat-trapping CO2 emissions are curtailed, the ocean watermark is more likely to go up by nearly a meter, enough to render several small island nations unlivable and damage fertile deltas home to hundreds of millions.