– “Antarctic ice shelves melting from warm water, study shows”
“Antarctica’s massive ice shelves are shrinking because they are being eaten away from below by warm water, a new study finds. That suggests that future sea levels could rise faster than many scientists have been predicting.

The western chunk of Antarctica is losing 23 feet of its floating ice sheet each year. Until now, scientists weren’t exactly sure how it was happening and whether or how man-made global warming might be a factor. The answer, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is that climate change

plays an indirect role – but one that has larger repercussions than if Antarctic ice were merely melting from warmer air.

Hamish Pritchard, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey, said research using an ice-gazing NASA satellite showed that warmer air alone couldn’t explain what was happening to Antarctica. A more detailed examination found a chain of events that explained the shrinking ice shelves,” quoting the AP.
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– “Antarctic: Grand Canyon-sized rift ‘speeding ice melt'”
“A rift in the Antarctic rock as deep as the Grand Canyon is increasing ice melt from the continent, researchers say.

A UK team found the Ferrigno rift using ice-penetrating radar, and showed it to be about 1.5km (1 mile) deep,” quoting Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News.
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– “Australia’s Antarctic airstrip melts”
“Australia’s airstrip in Antarctica is melting, prompting a scramble to find a new way to supply its research bases on the icy continent,” quoting Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney for UK’s The Telegraph.
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– UPDATE: December 23, 2012
“Western Antarctica warming confirmed”
“Western Antarctica holds 10 million square miles of glacial ice that scientists are watching out of sea-level rise concerns.

Western Antarctica has warmed unexpectedly fast over the last five decades, weather records confirm, adding to sea-level rise concerns in a warming world.

Temperatures in West Antarctica have increased at a rate nearly twiceas (sic) large as the global average, a 4.3 degree Fahrenheit increase since 1958, conclude meteorologists in the journal, Nature Geoscience, out Sunday [Dec. 23],” quoting Dan Vergano, USA TODAY.
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– UPDATE: January 15, 2013
“Rapid retreat of Antarctica glacier is called ‘unprecedented'”
“Like a plug in a leaky dam, little Pine Island Glacier holds back part of a massive ice sheet”
By Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet
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– Ramtha on Antarctica’s ice melt
“Little by little the chaos is coming. Just look at your world. A massive part of Greenland, not Iceland, broke loose and now is threatening the carbon supply. It is four to six times bigger than New York City. No one is talking about it except that it may ruin the oil rigs. That is all that is important — not global warming, no, no, no.
You don’t want to hear that Antarctica, the great Atlantis, is melting away. You will see the mountains and valleys and ancient pavilions. Scientists already see that it is melting away, that the ocean is rising — seventeen inches in a hundred years. They lie. Try two hundred feet, soon.
Who will be counting in feet if the Earth, like an orange, moves around inside its skin and rotates because the pull is so severe it tilts? Tilt — remember that word. Like a great tub of water, the tilt causes the ocean to stand high into space and then move across the landmasses. That is not fantasy; that is a geological fact. This little Earth, your sweet and beautiful home, is vulnerable to everything coming. And this, my beloved people, is your incarnation.”
– Ramtha
Evening, Critical Times – Part I
August 13, 2010