Greenland and Antarctica are now melting six times faster than in the 1990s, accelerating sea-level rise

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/03/16/climate-change-greenland-antarctica-melting-6-times-faster-than-90-s/5060236002/

Doyle Rice
Mar. 16, 2020

Here's some unsettling news from the other global crisis.

Greenland and Antarctica have lost 6.4 trillion tons of ice in the past three decades; unabated, this rate of melting could cause flooding that affects hundreds of millions of people by the end of the century, NASA said in a statement.

Satellite observations showed that the regions are losing ice six times faster than they were in the 1990s, according to a new study.

If the current melting trend continues, the regions will be on track to match the "worst-case" scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of an extra 6.7 inches of sea level rise by 2100.

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The findings were published by an international team of 89 polar scientists from 50 organizations, and are the most comprehensive assessment to date of the changing ice sheets, NASA said.

While it's true that the seas have risen and fallen before, what's new is the enormity of coastal development around the world that will need to be protected, moved or abandoned due to sea-level rise from human-caused global warming.

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Sea level has risen nearly 8 inches worldwide since 1880 but, unlike water in a bathtub, it doesn't rise evenly. In the past 100 years, it has climbed about a foot or more in some U.S. cities because of ocean currents and land subsidence.

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