ESA's Cryosat Mission Sees Antarctic Ice Losses Double

An anonymous reader writes in with news that seems to confirm the alarming reports last week about Antarctic ice melting. "The new assessment comes from Europe's Cryosat spacecraft, which has a radar instrument specifically designed to measure the shape of the ice sheet. The melt loss from the White Continent is sufficient to push up global sea levels by around 0.43mm per year. Scientists report the data in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (abstract). The new study incorporates three years of measurements from 2010 to 2013, and updates a synthesis of observations made by other satellites over the period 2005 to 2010. Cryosat has been using its altimeter to trace changes in the height of the ice sheet — as it gains mass through snowfall, and loses mass through melting."

Comments

Re:0.43 mm per year, eh?

[i kan reed]

The big secret(I don't know why it's a secret) is that melting ice has never been the biggest source of sea level change from climate change. Never. Contrary to what most people learn in middle school science classes, temperature does affect slightly the volume of liquids, and the increasing temperature of the deep ocean drive changes in volume. Tiny fraction decreases in the density of water might not seem like much, but it adds up to a lot more than a little melting sea ice when the average depth of the ocean is 2.4 kilometers.