Accurately reconstructing changes in the mass of Antarctica and Greenland glaciers between 1992 and 2018 was the focus of the analysis of data collected by 11 satellites by IMBIE (Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise), an international collaboration that brings together under a single aegis 89 researchers from all over the world and belonging to 50 universities and research institutes.
The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) participated in the collaboration, supported by ESA (European Space Agency) and by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), providing numerical models of the deformations of the earth's crust in response to the melting of the glaciers resting on it.
The combined data for the two glaciers, recently released by the IMBIE team and published in the journal "Nature", showed that Antarctica and Greenland lost 6.400 trillion tons of ice over the time period analyzed, causing global sea levels to rise by nearly 18 millimeters.
The study also found that while 81 billion tons of ice went into the sea each year in the 475s, the rate of melting has risen to 25 billion tons a year in the past decade—a six-fold increase in XNUMX years.
The comparison between the trend of the melting of the two glaciers and the climate forecasts of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change) showed that both Antarctica and Greenland are following the most pessimistic scenario among those elaborated. If this trend is confirmed, therefore, current forecasts of a sea level rise of 53 centimeters in 2100 will have to be revised upwards by another 17 centimeters, exposing an additional 40 million people to the risk of coastal flooding by the end of the century.
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