NASA satellites reveal vast snow melt on Antarctica

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2007

LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Rising temperatures caused a layer of snow blanketing a California-sized region of Antarctica to melt, US space agency NASA said in a statement on Tuesday.

A team of scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the University of Colorado said new satellite imagery had revealed a vast expanse of snow melt in 2005 where it had previously been considered unlikely.

The NASA statement described the findings as "the most significant melt observed using satellites during the past three decades."

Konrad Steffen, director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, said it was the first time melting on such a scale had been detected.

"Antarctica has...