Earth losing ice at record speed

The survey covers 215,000 mountain glaciers spread around the planet, the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the ice shelves floating around Antarctica, and sea ice drifting in the Arctic and Southern Oceans

London: Earth has lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice between 1994 and 2017, according to a study which reveals that the rate at which ice is disappearing across the planet is speeding up.

The research, published in The Cryosphere journal, found that the rate of ice loss from the Earth has increased markedly within the past three decades, from 0.8 trillion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tonnes per year by 2017.

The team, led by researchers at the University of Leeds in the UK, is the first to carry out a survey of global ice loss using satellite data.

The researchers noted that ice melt across the globe raises sea levels, increases the risk of flooding to coastal communities, and threatens to wipe out natural habitats which the wildlife depends on. The majority of all ice loss was driven by atmospheric melting (68 per cent), with the remaining losses (32 per cent) being driven by oceanic melting, they said.

The survey covers 215,000 mountain glaciers spread around the planet, the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the ice shelves floating around Antarctica, and sea ice drifting in the Arctic and Southern Oceans.