NASA/Maria-Jose Vinas
The snow that falls on Antarctica every year is accumulating as ice faster than it’s melting on the continent, a new study from NASA found.
This is strange news to many scientists. Most research to dateassumes Antarctica’s ice sheet is melting and contributing to global sea level rise.
But the authors of the new study, published Oct. 29 in the Journal of Glaciology, found that Antarctica had a net increase of 112 billion tons of ice per year from 1992 to 2001.
Between 2003 and 2008, however, that rate slowed to gains of 82 billion tons of ice per year.
It’s difficult to imagine that much ice, but it would be enough to cover the state of Rhode Island about 85 feet deep every year in pure form.
Rebecca Harrington 