GREENBELT, Md., March 9 (UPI) -- NASA scientists have confirmed climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in the Earth's largest areas of ice and snow.
In the most comprehensive survey ever undertaken of the massive ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, NASA warns if global warming continues as predicted, the polar ice sheets could dramatically change.
The survey's lead author, Jay Zwally of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said, "The Greenland ice sheet could be facing an irreversible decline by the end of the century."
Other recent studies have shown increasing losses of ice in parts of the sheets, but NASA says the survey announced this week is the first to inventory the losses of ice and the addition of new snow on both continents in a consistent and comprehensive way throughout an entire decade.
NASA said the survey documents, for the first time, extensive thinning of the West Antarctic ice shelves, an increase in snowfall in the interior of Greenland, and thinning at the edges of the ice shelves. All are signs of global warming as predicted by computer models.
The research was published this week in the Journal of Glaciology.
