Glacial Region's Melt Past 'Point of No Return,' NASA Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-12/antarctic-glacier-melt-appears-unstoppable-nasa-says.html

A rapidly melting glacial region of Antarctica has passed “the point of no return,” threatening to increase sea levels, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“The collapse of this sector of West Antarctica appears to be unstoppable,” Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and theUniversity of California,Irvine, said yesterday in astatement.

NASA estimates the glaciers in the Amundsen Sea region contain enough water to raise global sea levels by 4 feet (1.2 meters). United Nations researchers in September said sea levels have risen by 19 centimeters (7.5 inches) since the Industrial Revolution, and may rise an additional 26 centimeters to 98 centimeters by 2100.

“The alarming thing about the glacial evidence is that the rate of change is happening at a human timeframe as opposed to a geological timeframe,” John Skalbeck, a professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, said in a telephone interview. “It’s the rate of change that has geoscientists most alarmed. We’ve not seen these types of rates from the geological past.”

Antarctica’s ice sheets hold enough water to raise sea levels by 58.3 meters (191 feet), though that’s not likely for thousands of years, according to the latest estimate from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Although the Amundsen Sea region is only a fraction of the whole West Antarctic Ice Sheet, NASA estimates the region contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by 4 feet.