vIndianz.com (26 Nov, 2009) — By means of gravity measurement data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, a team of scientists from the University of Texas at Austin has discovered that the East Antarctic ice sheet-home to about 90 percent of Earth’s solid fresh water and formerly measured stable-may have begun to lose ice. The squad used Grace Data to calculate approximately Antarctica’s ice mass between 2002 and 2009. Their outcome, published Nov. 22 in the journal Nature Geosciences, found that the East Antarctic ice sheet is on the verge of losing mass, generally in coastal regions, at an estimated rate of 57 gigatonnes a year. A gigatonne is one billion metric tons, or more than 2.2 trillion pounds. The ice loss there may have begun as early as 2006. The study too established preceding results showing that West Antarctica is losing about 132 gigatonnes of ice per year.
“Although we are considering a development of accelerating ice loss in Antarctica, we had measured East Antarctica to be inviolate,” said lead author and Senior Research Scientist Jianli Chen of the university’s Center for Space Research. “But if it is losing mass, as our data points out, it may be a sign the state of East Antarctica has altered. Since it’s the largest ice sheet on Earth, ice loss there can have a large impact on international sea level rise in the future.”
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- Barnes & Noble Projects Wider Annual Loss; Shares Drop Most in 5 Months – Bloomberg
- Tony Blair: I knew little about the Middle East as PM compared to now – Telegraph.co.uk
- Tony Blair: I knew little about the Middle East as PM compared to now – Telegraph.co.uk
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- George Clooney taking over Robert Downey Jr`s role in Gravity – Monsters and Critics.com
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