Leonardo DiCaprio Instagram – Repost from @nowthisearth • Glaciers located in the Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica have lost more than 3 trillion metric tons of ice over a 25-year period, according to a recent study in the journal Nature Communications. Scientists said that the region is currently the biggest contributor to rising sea levels from the West Antarctic ice sheet. The team of researchers, led by Ben Davison, calculated the ‘mass balance’ of the Amundsen Sea Embayment by looking at the balance between the amount of snow and ice gained from snowfall and the amount lost through calving, which is the process where ice breaks off from glaciers. When calving occurs faster than ice is formed, the result is an increase in sea levels. They found that there was a net loss of 3,331 billion metric tons—which is equal to 3 trillion—of ice between 1996 and 2021, which caused an approximately 0.4-inch rise in global sea levels. ‘The 20 glaciers in West Antarctica have lost an awful lot of ice over the last quarter of a century, and there is no sign that the process is going to reverse anytime soon, although there were periods where the rate of mass loss did ease slightly,’ Davison said in a statement. ‘We were really surprised to see just how much periods of extremely low or high snowfall could affect the ice sheet over two- to five-year periods — so much so that we think they could play an important, albeit secondary role, in controlling rates of West Antarctic ice loss’ he continued. #news #ice #climatechange #climatecrisis #antarctica