Satellite lasers show rapid thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets

October 9th, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA is all set to begin a series of flights to study changes to Antarctica's sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. The flights are part of Operation Ice Bridge, a six-year campaign that is the largest airborne survey ever made of ice at Earth's polar regions.

October 8th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A giant NASA DC-8 aircraft loaded with geophysical instruments and scientists is all set to fly at low level over the coasts of West Antarctica, in order to understand the rapid Antarctic melting. The flights, dubbed 'Operation Ice Bridge', are an effort by NASA in cooperation with university researchers to image what is happening on, and under, the ice, in order to estimate future sea-level rises that might result.

September 23rd, 2009 NASA data: Greenland, Antarctic ice melt worseningWASHINGTON — New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode. British scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges.

September 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have mapped the history of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Numerous drillings have been made through both Greenland's ice sheet and small ice caps near the coast.

September 15th, 2009 LONDON - The first complete map of the lakes beneath Antarctica's ice sheets reveals the continent's secret water network is far more dynamic than we thought, and could be acting as a powerful lubricant beneath glaciers, contributing to sea level rise. According to a report in New Scientist, Ian Joughin at the University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues developed the map.

September 14th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a major research study, the link between declining carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the earth's atmosphere and the formation of the Antarctic ice caps some 34 million years ago has been confirmed for the first time. The research was carried out by a team of scientists from Cardiff, Bristol and Texas A and M universities, in a small East African village, where they extracted microfossils in samples of rocks which show the level of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere at the time of the formation of the ice-cap.

August 25th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has drilled an ice core of altogether 1757.87 m length on the Greenland inland ice within 110 days, which is expected to contain data on climate history of about 38,000 years. This completed the first season of the international drilling project NEEM (North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling) in north-western Greenland.

August 14th, 2009 LONDON - A new research has determined that one of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is thinning four times faster than it was 10 years ago. Professor Duncan Wingham of University College London (UCL) led the research team.

July 7th, 2009 SYDNEY - The melting of West Antarctic ice sheet, Antarctica's most vulnerable part, could raise global sea levels by up to five metres. "Polar ice sheets have grown and collapsed at least 40 times over the past five million years, causing major sea-level fluctuations," says Tim Naish, deputy director of Victoria University's Antarctic Research Centre (ARC).

June 22nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research by scientists has revealed that modern glaciers in deep ocean water can undergo periods of rapid retreat, where they can shrink even more quickly than has recently been observed. According to new findings by paleoclimatologists at the University at Buffalo (UB), US, modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat.

May 15th, 2009 WASHINGTON - If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapses due to global warming, it would directly threaten New York, Washington and San Francisco as sea levels near US coasts would rise by 25 percent more than the global average, according to a new study. Antarctica holds about nine times the volume of ice of Greenland.

April 22nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research has determined that increased growth in Antarctic sea ice during the past 30 years is a result of changing weather patterns caused by the ozone hole. The research, done by scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and NASA, indicates that while there has been a dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice, Antarctic sea ice has increased by a small amount as a result of the ozone hole delaying the impact of greenhouse gas increases on the climate of the continent.

April 16th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A study, which is being touted as controversial, has said that fossil coral reefs at a Mexican theme park "confirm" that sea levels rose rapidly about 121,000 years ago. Previous research on fossil reefs had shown that sea levels surged by 13 to 19 feet (4 to 6 meters) near the end of the last time period between ice ages, known as an interglacial period.

March 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists are taking the help of a robot submarine to travel under an Antarctic glacier and learn why it has been thinning and accelerating over recent decades. Autosub, the robot submarine built and developed by the UK's National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, has been exploring Pine Island Glacier, a floating extension of the West Antarctic ice sheet, using sonar scanners to map the seabed and the underside of the ice as it juts into the sea.

March 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - New research has indicated that rising sea levels due to global warming would have major impacts around the world, with a maximum rise of one meter by 2100 endangering one in ten humans in low lying coastal areas. The research, presented at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen shows that the upper range of sea level rise by 2100 could be in the range of about one meter, or possibly more.