Antarctic area is doomed to melt

摘要

Several of Antarctica's glaciers have already begun an unstoppable meltdown, two studies suggest. Eric Rignot at the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues used satellite radar to measure the retreat of five glaciers in West Antarctica and found that there is nothing holding the ice sheets back from catastrophic collapse, leaving them more vulnerable than previously thought. These glaciers hold enough water to raise the global sea level by 1.2 metres.