Skip to navigation | Skip to content  Antarctic ice sheet
melting fast  Antarctic ice  A floating iceberg off the
Antarctic Peninsula (Image: CU-Boulder National Snow and Ice
Data Center)  Antarctica's mammoth ice sheet is in "significant
decline", scientists say, probably due to climate change.  US
researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder say online
in the journal Science today the Antarctic ice sheet is losing
up to 152 cubic kilometres of ice a year.  "This is the first
study to indicate the total mass balance of the Antarctic ice
sheet is in significant decline," says Dr Isabella Velicogna, of
the university's Cooperative Institute for Research in
Environmental Sciences.  The team calculated that the ice sheet
lost 152 cubic kilometres a year from April 2002 to August 2005,
give or take 80 cubic kilometres.   The bulk of the loss is
occurring in the West Antarctic ice sheet, according to
Velicogna, whose team used two satellites orbiting Earth in
tandem to gather data.  These satellites estima