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:
“Goodness and evil never share the same road, just as ice and charcoal never share the same container.”
—Chinese proverb.
“While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily
thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out,
and the mass hardens,”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)