Scientists at UC Irvine have created a first-ever map of glaciers across the Antarctic continent, revealing new details of speed and movement that ought to prove important in forecasting sea-level rise from international warming.
The scientists stitched along billions of knowledge points from a spread of satellite measurements, uncovering a glacial tributary reaching farther inland than expected, yet as previously unknown formations moving as quick as nine,000 feet or additional per year over thousands of miles toward the Antarctic coast.
They conjointly mapped the previously uncharted glacial landscape of east Antarctica, that spans some seventy seven % of the five.4 million-square-mile continent.
And they found that the glaciers — primarily rivers of ice — slide toward the coast along bedrock all the means into the inside of the continent, a replacement discovery that might amendment estimates of future sea-level rise linked to planetary warming.
“It's a game-changer for glaciology,” lead author Eric Rignot, an enquiry scientist at UC Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in an exceedingly statement released by UCI. “We're seeing wonderful flows from the guts of the continent that had never been described before.”
The new study, revealed on-line Thursday in Science categorical, doesn't estimate whether or not Antarctic glaciers are melting in response to climate amendment – partially as a result of most of the info on the speed and movement of the glacial network is current.
Most of the info was collected from 2007 to 2009.
“What it's showing is velocity” of glacial movement, said UC Irvine researcher Bernd Scheuchl. “It's providing a snapshot that may be a reference knowledge set for future generations of researchers.”
But Rignot, who makes a speciality of tracking polar ice, and different scientists found in an exceedingly separate, 18-year study that the melting of ice sheets seems to be accelerating at each poles.
The new study conjointly concerned UCI scientist Jeremie Mouginot and researchers from NASA, the ecu and Canadian area agencies and also the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, among others.
The data came from European, Japanese and Canadian satellites.
The study was done as a part of a worldwide effort known as the International Polar Year.
12 years ago
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