The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) reports that “In recent years, environmental scientists have warily watched as the ice sheet on the coast of West Antarctica has begun melting at unprecedented rates. In May, NASA glaciologists declared that the catastrophic melt of the ice sheet to be ‘unstoppable.”
The news is dire indeed – unless you consider the actual facts.
The Antarctica is the earth’s southernmost land mass and is commonly termed its 7th continent. Its area comprises 14.0 million square km (5.4 million square miles) which actually makes it the fifth-largest continent on our planet. In comparison Australia is only one half the size of Antarctica. Despite its size, the continent does not have any permanent residents. There is a reason for that.
As the continent is centered on the earth’s South Pole it receives very little sunlight. A large part of the year there is nearly total darkness while we enjoy summer in the northern hemisphere. Most of Antarctica’s land mass is covered with an ice sheet one mile thick. That covers most of the continent except for a range of high mountain tops (up to 4.5 km or 2.5 miles in height) that rise above the continental ice sheet.
Like glaciers in Greenland and other parts of the world, the Antarctic ice sheet also continuously but slowly flows downhill into the ocean. At the water’s edge parts of the ice break off, a process termed calving, and result in free-floating icebergs that are a great danger to marine vessels. The Titanic was one of many ships lost that way. The western Antarctic (land) ice sheet extends far into the sea. That part, of course, is particularly prone to dissolution by the water and to breaking off from the ice mass on land. According to the definition of “sea-ice” by Merriam Webster it ought to be termed that rather than land ice.
In any event, the loss of such sea-ice (formerly land ice) from the western Antarctica is well compensated for by an increasing land ice mass on the eastern part of the continent.