A paper published last week in the journal Science shows that ice sheets are melting faster than ever. According to the paper, ice sheets are melting at a rate three times faster than previously anticipated. Although the amount of melting is still small, contributing between 0.59 ± 0.20 millimeter a year to the rate of global sea-level rise, the speed of the melting is concerning.
Ice is melting particularly quickly in Greenland, which, the research concludes, is a more pressing issue than Antarctica's melt. The study showed that the melt rate has gone from 55 billion tonnes a year in the 1990s to 280 billion tonnes a year.
According to the Washing Post, it takes about 10 trillion tonnes to raise sea levels by 1 inch (2.54cm). Since 1992, the Post continues, polar ice sheets have shed 5 trillion tonnes of ice.
