Melting glaciers, not ice sheets, primarily responsible for
rising sea levels December 11, 2006 A new study says that
melting glaciers are contributing more to the global rise in sea
levels than melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Of
the estimated 650 billion tons of ice lost to the oceans
annually, some 400 billion tons comes from the melting of small
glaciers and icecaps, according to Professor Tad Pfeffer of the
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of
Colorado at Boulder. Only 250 billion tons -- or less than 40
percent -- comes from the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic
ice sheets. "The message from our study is that small glaciers
and ice caps are the biggest sources of water in global sea
rise, which runs contrary to many news reports focusing on
Antarctica and Greenland," said Pfeffer, who presented the
findings today at the annual meeting of American Geophysical
Union in San Francisco. "We feel that ignoring the contributions
of small glaciers and icecaps is dange