Decrease in Antarctic glacier could increase 3 meter sea level

The Greenland Ice Sheet alone holds enough water to raise the sea level by 24 feet. According to NASA, this means that Greenland's ice is melting on average seven times faster today than it was at the beginning of the study period.

Helheim Glacier: The COP25 climate summit in Madrid has concluded with a warning that the earth may be approaching the 'tipping point'.

At present researchers are worried about the rate at which the iceberg is melting in Greenland while in Antarctica some major glacier is starting to disappear permanently allowing the other glaciers to melt too.

In Greenland in the northern summer, New York University researcher David Holland observed record-shattering heat and melting events.

At Helheim, he saw one of Greenland's fastest-retreating glaciers had shrunk about 6 miles (10 kilometers) since 2005.

"And so this is Helheim Glacier far off to my right, in front the mélange is the Helheim Fjord. And this glacier has retreated more than 10 kilometers or so in the last decade or so from that position far off from my left to where you see it today," he says.

Reports from NASA and the European Space Agency released on 10 December 2019 show the Greenland Ice Sheet is now melting rapidly, having lost 3.8 trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2018.

Antarctic glacier could increase water level of various regions

Furthermore, in the case of the Thwaites glacier, because of its unique geometry, Professor Holland said that the glacier was to melt entirely it could cause sea levels worldwide to rise by as much as 1 meter, with potentially even worse consequences to follow.

Indeed, sea-level rise from melting glaciers is a growing source of concern across the world, with the Earth's glaciers already melting faster than scientists had thought.

The concerns come as climate activists urge world leaders to do more to drive down carbon emissions. The melting is accelerating due to global warming, adding more water to already rising seas.

Speaking at the COP25 conference in Madrid, 16-year-old Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg highlighted the risks, if global temperatures rise above 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Greenland and Antarctica are the well known icy plains with the world's only permanent ice sheets.

Since 1961, the world has lost 10.6 trillion tonnes of ice and snow (9.6 trillion metric tonnes), enough to cover the lower 48 US states in about four feet of ice according to NASA.

The Greenland Ice Sheet alone holds enough water to raise the sea level by 24 feet. According to NASA, this means that Greenland's ice is melting on average seven times faster today than it was at the beginning of the study period.