The glaciers are melting faster than expected

The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica in the south are losing mass at a rate faster than the predictions had been made so far, this will impact significantly on the rise in global sea level, according to a study released this NASA Wednesday.
The study report suggests that ice sheets are crumbling faster than the glaciers in the mountains and this will be the main factor that contributes to a global rise in sea level, much earlier than expected and the ecology.

The ecology and the glaciers

An example is the following case, in 2006 the Poles lost a combined mass of 475 gigatons per year on average, enough to raise global sea levels by an average of 1.3 millimeters per year compared to they lost 402 gigatons average of the mountain glaciers.

NASA has studied some information from satellites between 1992 and 2009 and subsequently obtained every year during the course of the study, the layers of polar ice caps have lost a combined average of 36.3 gigatons more than the previous year .

It is estimated that "The ice will be the main cause of rising sea level in the future is not surprising, since they have a much larger mass of ice that mountain glaciers," said study author Eric Rignot, University of California.

Glaciers are melting

"The bad news is that the greatest contribution of the ice is already happening," said the scientist who conducted research in collaboration with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA.
The reports both show that "if current trends continue, it is likely that the increase in sea level is significantly higher than the levels projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 and the ecology."

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