Antarctica Losing Mt. Everest’s Worth of Ice as Melt Triples
This article is for subscribers only.
Antarctic glaciers are losing in water weight the equivalent of Mt. Everest every two years, with melting rates on part of the continent tripling over the past decade.
A 21-year analysis by NASA and the University of California at Irvine found that glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, Antarctica’s fastest-melting region, lost an average of 83 gigatons of ice a year from 1992 to 2013, according to a statement today from the American Geophysical Union, which is publishing the findings in its journal. Earth’s highest peak weighs about 161 gigatons.