A multitude of new climate studies has painted a picture of the numerous factors that are simultaneously leading to rising sea levels, which could increase by more than 10 feet by the end of the century.
Scientists
at University of California, Irvine found significant acceleration in
the melting of ice across Antarctica, compared with how fast the ice
was melting in the 1980s.
On
social media, author and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben was among
those who issued a reminder that despite daily news regarding the
Trump administration, the climate crisis remains "the
biggest story"
affecting the entire planet.
The
report, led by glaciologist Eric Rignot and published in the
Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences,
revealed that the southernmost continent has lost 278
billion tons of ice per year since 2009—an enormous change from the
1980s, when about 44 billion tons of ice there melted annually.
Compared
to just last year, the Antarctic ice is melting 15 percent faster,
with East Antarctica—previously found to be relatively stable from
year to year—now losing 56 billion tons of ice per year.
Rignot told CNN that he had not expected ice in the eastern part of
the continent to be melting at such an alarming rate.
[...]
Meanwhile,
a separate study published in Science
last week showed that the planet's oceans are warming about 40
percent faster than scientists indicated in 2013 in the U.N.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
The
oceans have absorbed about 90 percent of the energy created by fossil
fuel extraction over the last century, keeping the planet's land from
warming more than it already has.
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