Ice sheets melting faster: study


Surface melt water rushing along the Greenland Ice Sheet through a supra glacial stream channel sou Surface melt water rushing along the Greenland Ice Sheet through a supra-glacial stream channel, sou [PA]








Speaking at a news conference in London, Prof Shepherd said that although no coastal cities had been flooded in the past 20 years, there were real concerns about what might happen in the next century.

He added: "The data do show clearly there are parts of the ice sheets that are responding in exactly the way we would expect them to respond - in a negative way - as a result of changes in their local climate." The research highlighted parts of Antarctica where the ice was "clearly not behaving in a normal way", said Prof Shepherd. "It's unstable and it's accelerating and it's sea level contribution is rising year-on-year," he said. "Greenland even more so, we see that very clearly. That allows us to say to the people who build models for future climate projections that these are the areas you should concentrate on."