No Major Changes in Antarctic Ice Sheet - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), August, 1999

The interior of the west Antarctic ice sheet--the largest grounded repository of ice on the planet--isn't melting rapidly, according to an international team of scientists who analyzed five years of satellite radar measurements covering a large part of the southernmost continent. The study is important in that it offers one of the best investigations so far of possible mass balance changes in the ice covering Antarctica. While global warming has been blamed for possible reductions in the Antarctic ice sheet, scientists have argued over whether there was definitive evidence of such ice loss. It also is unclear whether the west Antarctic ice sheet would be unstable in a warmer world.

The new study suggests that the answer is no, at least for the middle of the ice sheet. "Based on our short, five-year period of observation of the interior of Antarctica, we do not seem to detect that the ice is melting more than one centimeter per year," indicates C.K. Shum, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and geodetic science, Ohio State University, Columbus. A one-centimeter (0.4-inch) decrease in Antarctic ice sheet volume roughly converts into a one-millimeter (0.04-inch) rise in global sea level.