World's Ice Sheets Lost 2 Trillion Tons Since 2003

Recent NASA observations of the world's ice spreads, via the GRACE satellite system, show that the ice in all the major reserves, including Greenland, Antarctica, Alaska, and the Himalayas, is melting at an ever increasing speed. According to official estimates, over the past 5 years, more than 2 trillion tons of ice separated from their sheets and melted into the world's oceans, which have registered a rise of about half a millimeter yearly over the past two to three decades.

"It's not getting better; it's continuing to show strong signs of warming and amplification. There's no reversal taking place," warns Jay Zwally, who is an ice scientist for the American Space Agency. "The pace of change is starting to outstrip our ability to keep up with it, in terms of our understanding of it," adds National Snow and Ice Data Center senior scientist, Mark Serreze, from Boulder, Colorado. He is also one of the co-authors of the Arctic amplification study, which yielded the new conclusions.

For those who are overly-optimistic, the good news is that the melt that occurred this year is far smaller than that of 2007, but still remains one of the highest ever encountered. Alaska alone showed signs of improvement after a devastating season in 2005, with more intense storms over the past couple of years restoring some of its ice sheets.

Greenland on the other hand is not that lucky. It's showing massive signs of melt throughout the year, and the amounts of melted water increase constantly. Already, large chunks of it gave way and are now floating or already a part of the Atlantic Ocean. Also, on its surface, small lakes of blue water have been appearing over the last decade.

These seemingly harmless ponds are actually the most obvious signs that something is terribly wrong with the ice there. Water from these lakes infiltrates the ground until it reaches the bedrock underneath, where it starts accumulating. Once sufficient amounts are gathered, they flow towards the ocean, taking the whole ice spread above with them. And if the ponds appear in the middle of the ice sheets, it's easy to understand what will happen next. And though these processes would normally take decades, if not centuries, chances are that a large portion of the ice covering Greenland will be gone within a decade.