East Antarctic ice began to melt faster in 2006: study LONDON
(Reuters) - East Antarctica's ice started to melt faster from
2006, which could cause sea levels to rise sooner than
anticipated, according to a study by scientists at the
University of Texas. In the study published in Nature's
Geoscience journal, scientists estimated that East Antarctica
has been losing ice mass at an average rate of 5 to 109
gigatonnes per year from April 2002 to January 2009, but the
rate speeded up from 2006. The melt rate after 2006 could be
even higher, the scientists said. "The key result is that appear
to start seeing a large amount of ice loss in East Antarctica,
mostly in the long coastal regions (in Wilkes Land and Victoria
Land), since 2006," Jianli Chen at the university's center for
space research and one of the study's authors, told Reuters.
"This, if confirmed, could indicate a state change of East
Antarctica, which could pose a large impact on global sea levels
in the future," Chen said. Previous estimates for East