Ice Mass Changes
Current international focus on global warming issues has drawn attention to the melting of the polar ice caps. An early analysis of GRACE-based studies data indicated that the EAIS was losing mass at a rate of 57 billion tonnes per year and that the total Antarctic ice sheet (including WAIS, and EAIS coastal areas) was losing mass at a rate of 152 cubic kilometers (ca 139 billion tonnes) per year. More recent estimate published in November 2012 and based on the GRACE data as well as on an improved glacial isostatic adjustment model indicates that the East Antarctica actually gained mass from 2002 to 2010 at a rate of 60 ± 13 Gt/y.
Read more about this topic: East Antarctic Ice Sheet
Famous quotes containing the words ice and/or mass:
“When the ice is covered with snow, I do not suspect the wealth under my feet; that there is as good as a mine under me wherever I go. How many pickerel are poised on easy fin fathoms below the loaded wain! The revolution of the seasons must be a curious phenomenon to them. At length the sun and wind brush aside their curtain, and they see the heavens again.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)