Two Trillion Tons of melting Arctic Ice

TEMPO Interactive, Washington: Since 2003, more than two trillion tons of pieces of ice in Greenland, Antarctica, Alaska and melt. The new data comes from NASA satellites show the latest signal of what the scientists called for global warming.

More than half of the ice lost during the last five years is in Greenland. "It is known from the weight of ice measurements made by satellites Grace," said Scott Luthcke, NASA experts geophysics.

He stated that the water comes from the Greenland ice melelehnya in the last five years can fill the 11 Chesapeake Bay in the Atlantic Ocean. "Rate mencairnya Greenland seems to continue to increase," he said.

NASA scientists plan to present the findings at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco today. Luthcke said calculation of Greenland ice in the summer of 2008 is not yet complete, but the ice is missing this year's big enough, not even separah in 2007.

That's good news for Alaska. "After presipitasi decrease in 2005, large pieces of ice increased slightly in 2008 because of the amount of rain snow that happens," said Luthcke. Since 2003, when NASA satellites started measurements, Alaska has lost 400 billion tons esnya.

In making the measurement of the impact of climate change, scientists usually also need to monitor the data for several years to know the trends overall. Melelehnya different pieces of ice with a sea of ice, sea ice because of the increase is very small.

In the 1990s, Greenland is not responsible for the increase in surface sea water world, but the island is now adding high surface sea about half a millimeter per year, said Jay Zwally, NASA ice expert.

"Melelehnya land ice in Greenland, Antarctica, Alaska and sea surface has increased about 5 millimeters in the past five years," said Luthcke. High surface sea water also increased due to expansion when the water to warm the air.