The Bad News Continues to Flow About Antarctica’s Ice
By Michael D. Lemonick It’s just two weeks since a paper in Nature flagged an ominous thinning of ice shelves along parts of the Antarctic coast lying due south of the Pacific Ocean. The ice appears to be melting from below, as changing ocean currents are bringing relatively warm water to bathe the shelves’ undersides — and as the ice shelves lose mass, they also lose their ability to slow land-based ice in its slide toward the sea. Now there’s something new to worry about. A pair of brand-new studies published today, one in Nature and one in its sister…
