More than 40% of Antarctica’s ice shelves have shrunk since 1997 with almost half showing “no sign of recovery”, a study has found, linking the change to the climate breakdown.
Scientists at the University of Leeds have calculated that 67tn tonnes of ice was lost in the west while 59tn tonnes was added to the east between 1997 and 2021, resulting in a net loss of 7.5tn tonnes.
Warm water on the western side of Antarctica has been melting ice, whereas in the east, ice shelves have either stayed the same or grown as the water is colder there.
Is that supposed to mean “trillion”?
Is it tons of tonnes? If they put the whole number it would have helped
No numbers, just awkward analogies, but yes it’s trillion:
If all the lost ice was piled on London, it would stand over 2 km tall - or 7.4 times the height of the Shard. If it were to cover Manhattan, it would stand at 61 km – or 137 Empire State Buildings placed on top of one another.
- I think this from March is the research they referenceOriginal paper(?): Davison, B.J., Hogg, A.E., Rigby, R. et al. Sea level rise from West Antarctic mass loss significantly modified by large snowfall anomalies. Nat Commun 14, 1479 (2023).
So 7 500 000 000 000 tonnes of melted ice not returning.
To put this in different perspective, one of the heaviest human made thing would be the Great Wall of China which is about 53 million tonnes. That means the equivalent of 142 thousand Great Wall of China melted since 1997.
I sure am glad the scientists found the ice that Antarctica lost.
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