It is mostly known to scientists that for over a decade, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been losing mass, resulting for the sea level to rise. However, they did no know that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is ten times larger and has the potential to contribute to the rise of global sea level by 50 meters.
In an article by Science Daily, the huge size and importance of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet did not stop the conflicting results that could have been published about its recent behavior. In a study led by a group of scientists from NASA published last 2015, they suggested that this part of Antartica was already having too much mass that it compensated for the losses of the west neighbor.
In determining on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the largest ice sheet on the planet, and its activity is vital to the understanding not only for scientists but also to the society. These factors would influence the present day and the future of the sea level rise.
In an article published by Phys.org, a team of scientists led by the University of Bristol, together with the University of Wollongong, Australia have studied the problem of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. It is through combining various satellite observations within a statistical model that could be able to separate the process related to ice mass changes over Antartica.
"We used similar data sets to the NASA team but added other satellite data from a mission called the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) to help solve for mass gains and losses," Jonathan Bamber of the Bristol Glaciology Center said about their study on East Antarctic Ice Sheet's activity. The Bristol Glaciology Center is a part of the School of Geographical Sciences.
He also said that they have been conducting experiments but the conclusions defied their previous studies about the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. "We then conducted different experiments, using similar assumptions made in the NASA study but found out that in every experiment, mass loss from the west always exceeded gains in the east," Bamber said.
