Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice 6 times faster than in the 1990s, new studies show.
"This would mean 400 million people are at risk of annual coastal flooding by 2100," Shepherd added.
For the new studies, a team of 89 scientists assessed ice loss data from 11 satellites that have been monitoring Antarctica and Greenland since the early 1990s. The data created a detailed picture of how much mass each region's glaciers have lost over the last 30 years, and showed how quickly the remaining ice is flowing into the sea.
The team found that Greenland and Antarctica have lost a combined 7 trillion tons of ice from 1992 to 2017. Almost all of the lost ice in Antarctica and about half of the lost ice in Greenland is due to warming ocean waters melting the edges of glaciers, causing each region's ice sheets to flow more quickly toward the sea. The rest of Greenland's ice loss is due to warming air temperatures, which melt the ice sheets at their surfaces, the researchers said.
The rate of ice loss in each ice sheet also increased substantially over that period, rising from a combined 89 billion tons per year in the 1990s to 523 billion tons per year in the 2010s. This sixfold increase in the rate of ice loss means that the melting polar ice sheets are responsible for a third of all sea level rise, the researchers said.
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