NASA's satellite image show Antarctica thinning faster than predicted

A satellite analysis on Wednesday revealed that the world’s largest ice sheet has lost twice as much ice over the past 25 years as previously thought because Antarctica’s coastal glaciers are losing icebergs faster than the environment can restore the melting ice.

The study, led by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and published in the journal Nature, raised new concerns about how quickly climate change is weakening Antarctica's floating ice shelves, which contribute to the rising global sea levels.

It takes thousands of years for ice shelves to form. Once formed, they act as buttresses to hold back glaciers from slipping into oceans, or else they can raise sea levels. Their size is constant as a cycle of calving and regrowth keeps them. However, in recent decades, warmer oceans have damaged the shelves from below.

The main conclusion of the study concluded that the net loss of Antarctic ice from coastal glaciers calving into the ocean is equal to the net quantity of ice that scientists already knew was being lost due to thinning caused due to melting of glaciers. The study further claimed that the thinning and calving, the total has decreased the bulk of Antarctica’s ice shelves by 12 trillion tonnes since the year 1997, twice more than anticipated, the same area as Switzerland. According to him, 88 per cent of the world’s ice could raise the sea level.

Chad Greene, JPL scientist in a press release said, "Antarctica is crumbling at its edges."

According to NASA, losses between the year 2002 to 2022 were roughly 149 million tonnes per year. The team used satellite photos to measure and record glacier flow and calving since 1997. Researchers concluded that Antarctica will reach the glacier levels pre-2000s by the end of this century.