New research indicates annual loss from the Antarctic ice sheet has surged [ark | more\ark] by 75 percent in a decade as a result of global warming. The study by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory [ark] appears in the Journal “Nature Geoscience” and is described as the most comprehensive to date on the status of Antarctic ice sheets. Using extensive measurements by radar they found in 2006 some 192 billion tonnes of Antarctic ice was lost [search] into the sea — a rate found to have increased by 75 percent in 10 years.

While there has been little scientific doubt that Greenland’s ice is melting [search], there has been more uncertainty over the fate of the larger stores of ice on Antarctica. Until now there has been no consensus whether ice cover is growing, shrinking, or stable — and various studies have had conflicting results. Some have suggested increased precipitation was leading to the accumulation of ice, a finding contradicted by this new study.