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According to the British Daily Mail, researchers at the University of Washington examined data from two lasers that were able to make the most accurate measurements of ice sheets to date.
The results showed that in Antarctica, sea level rise is due to the loss of floating ice shelves that melt in a warm ocean, preventing the flow of ice from land to ocean, and the Antarctic ice sheet lost 118 gigatons of ice on average, while Greenland lost an average of 200 gigatons of ice per year.
While one gigaton of ice is enough to fill 400,000 Olympic pools, the results come from the ICESat-2 satellite, launched into orbit in the fall of 2018.
The team in charge of the study compared recent data from ICESat-2 with previous measurements taken between 2003 and 2009, where lead researcher Benjamin Smith said: “If you see an ice cap or an ice cap for a month or a year , she won’t learn much about what the weather is doing to her. “
“We now have a 16-year period between ICESat and ICESat-2, and we can be more confident that the changes we see in the ice are related to long-term climate change,” said Smith, an ice scientist at the University of Washington.
He added: “We are seeing high-quality measurements of each ice sheet, allowing us to make a detailed and accurate comparison with ICESat data.”
Previous ice loss or acquisition studies often analyzed data from many satellites and airborne missions, but the new study only takes one type of measurement.
But it takes the height measured by a tool that bounces off the laser pulses on the ice surface, providing the most detailed and accurate image of the ice cap change.
