TIME is running out for the West Antarctic ice sheet, a NASA scientist says.
At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Boston last week, he predicted
that the ice sheet would be gone in between 1000 and 5000 years.
鈥淚n the past 11 000 years, it鈥檚 lost two-thirds of its mass,鈥� says Robert
Bindschadler of NASA鈥檚 Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Bindschadler extrapolated from changes since the West Antarctic ice started
shrinking about 11 000 years ago.
The melting sheet could help to resolve a puzzle鈥攚hy sea level is
rising by two millimetres every year when known sources account for only half
that. Bindschadler says West Antarctica may add the extra millimetre.
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