The ice in Antarctica is continuing to thicken

The US Space and Aeronautics Agency (NASA) said that over the past decade, the amount of ice accumulated in Antarctica was greater than the amount of ice lost. This raises new questions about the current theory of ice melting causing sea level rise.

The amount of ice in Antarctica is getting thicker

In the new study called 'The More Accumulated Ice in Antarctica Beyond the Loss' published in the Journal of Glaciology on October 30, the authors now work at the Flight Control Center. NASA's Goddard cylinder, the University of Maryland and Sigma Space Corporation, analyzed satellite data from 1992 - 2001 and found that every year Antarctica accumulated an additional 112 billion tons of ice.

Although this accumulation rate slowed down during the period of 2003-2008, the amount of ice accumulation remained at 82 billion tons per year during this period.

However, according to NASA's lead author and ice researcher Jay Zwally, it should be emphasized that the newly obtained results do not mean that Antarctica will continue and continue to accumulate more ice by this trend. can be reversed in only about two decades.

The same view is that the amount of melting ice is increasing, but the new NASA study results are contrary to previous studies, including the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC), which once warned of Antarctic ice melting and causing sea level rise.

The ice in Antarctica is still thickening.

During the press conference to announce the results of the group's research, scientist Jay Zwally said: 'The good news is that currently Antarctica does not contribute to rising sea levels , whereas the annual removal of 0.23mm of seawater . But this is also bad news at the same time. If the 0.27mm sea level rise information per year reported by the IPCC is because Antarctica does not actually originate from Antarctica, there must be another source of sea level rise that is currently not possible. known '.

By studying the data of the height of the Antarctic ice blocks by radar waves from two satellites of the European space agency in the period 1992 - 2001, and laser sensors of a NASA satellite in From 2003 to 2008, scientists estimated the amount of ice accumulation that took place in Antarctica.

According to Jay, the new study offers a broader view of the planet's weather picture, including changes in the Northern Hemisphere as well as changes in weather patterns. Compared to the rest of the planet, the climate is warming faster than in the Arctic and it is a major cause of rising sea levels. Meanwhile, much of the Antarctic continent is still below the freezing temperature even in the summer so there are very few bands here.

In this new study, scientists also point out the difficulties in measuring the height of Antarctic ice sheets, saying that more advanced tools are needed to get more accurate results, especially in the East Antarctic region, where there were heterogeneous results in previous measurements.

In addition, Mr. Zwally did not agree with previous claims that snowfall was the cause of an increase in land height in Antarctica. NASA's research team analyzed meteorological data, including data from 1979, resulting in a decline in snow accumulation on the continent. This shows that the ice on this continent becomes thicker than a logical explanation with the increase in Antarctic land height.

"I don't think there will be enough snow to make up for the melting of ice , " Jay said. According to NASA's explanation, from the end of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, the amount of hot air that carried a lot of steam doubled the amount of snow accumulated in the continent and attached them to hard ice.

NASA is currently developing a new satellite called ICESat-2 that is able to provide more accurate data for measuring changes in Antarctic ice in the long term. The satellite is expected to be launched in 2018.