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:
“The awaited scream rises,
the shattering
of glass and the cracking
of bone
a polar tumult as when
black ice booms....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“A pragmatic race, the Japanese appear to have decided long ago that the only reason for drinking alcohol is to become intoxicated and therefore drink only when they wish to be drunk.
So I went out into the night and the neon and let the crowd pull me along, walking blind, willing myself to be just a segment of that mass organism, just one more drifting chip of consciousness under the geodesics.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)