THE ice sheets of West Antarctica are warming much faster than we thought, suggesting swathes of it could melt and send global sea levels soaring.
Climatologists have struggled to work out whether Antarctica is warming, and how quickly, because it has few weather stations and the records from some are incomplete.
David Bromwich of Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues filled in the gaps for one key station using statistics and data from a climate model. They conclude that temperatures since 1958 have risen about 0.46 °C per decade - more than twice as fast as previously thought (Nature Geoscience, doi.org/j351).
But Michael Mann at Penn State University in University Park says that warmer ocean water flooding in underneath the sheet poses a greater threat.
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Ice sheets of West Antarctica are warming fast
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Ice sheets of West Antarctica are warming fast
