The eastern sheet lost ice at a rate of about 57 billion metric tons a year from 2002 to 2009, contributing to the continent’s total annual average loss of about 190 billion tons, scientists at the University of Texas at Austin said in the journal Nature Geoscience.
United Nations scientists in 2007 said most of Antarctica’s contribution to rising sea levels amid global warming comes from the western sheet, with the eastern part either holding steady or gaining mass. The latest findings for East Antarctica are “surprising” because they differ from other estimates, said glaciologist Jonathan Bamber, who wasn’t involved in the study.
“I’m surprised because other studies for slightly different time periods have come up with values that are very close to zero,” Bamber, professor of physical geography at the University of Bristol in England, said in a telephone interview. “This result really confirms that there are very substantial inconsistencies between different estimates.”