Climate catastrophe

Antarctica lost 40 per cent ice sheets due to melting from 2012 to 2017, contributing to 0.6 mm of sea level rise per year

THE RATE of melting from the ice sheets of Antarctica has tripled in the past five years as compared to the melting two decades ago. An exhaustive research, involving 84 scientists from 44 international bodies, shows that Antarctica has lost almost 3 trillion tonnes of ice since 1992; 40 per cent of the loss took place from 2012 to 2017 during which the pole could have contributed 0.6 mm of sea level rise a year. The melting is happening so fast that Antarctica alone can add more than 15 cm to sea level rise by the end of the century, projects the study, published in Nature. So far, Antarctica has been considered the more resilient of the two poles to climate change.„