Antarctic ice sheet melting ever faster

Washington: Using gravitational satellite data, researchers have found that during the past decade, Antarctica's massive ice sheet lost twice its mass in its western portion compared to what it accumulated in the east. The southern continent's ice cap is melting ever faster, the researchers determined. The researchers "weighed" Antarctica's ice sheet and found that from 2003 to 2014, the ice sheet lost 92 billion tonnes per year. Since 2008, ice loss from West Antarctica's unstable glaciers doubled from an average annual loss of 121 billion tons of ice to twice that by 2014, the researchers found.