Climate change: West Antarctica's Getz glaciers flowing faster
Wherever you look in West Antarctica right now, the message is the same: Its marine-terminating glaciers are being melted by warm seawater.
Scientists have just taken a detailed look at the ice streams flowing into the ocean along a 1,000km-stretch of coastline known as the Getz region.
It incorporates 14 glaciers - and they've all speeded up.
Since 1994, they've lost 315 gigatonnes of ice - equivalent to 126 million Olympic swimming pools of water.
If you put this in the context of the Antarctic continent's contribution to global sea-level rise over the same period, Getz accounts for just over 10% of the total - a little under a millimetre.
"This is the first time anyone has done a really detailed study of this area of West Antarctica. It's very inaccessible to people to go and do field work because it's so mountainous; most of it hasn't ever been stepped on by humans," explained Heather Selley, a glaciologist at the Nerc Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds, UK.
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