Recent NASA studies show the Anarctic ice sheet is gaining more mass than it is losing,
ScienceDaily.com reports.
In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the Antarctic ice sheet had lost large amounts of mass with little or no gain, but new NASA studies say the opposite.
A new analysis of satellite data shows a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001, according to ScienceDaily.com. The gain slowed to 82 billion tons per year between 2003 and 2008.
Jay Zwally, who led the NASA study, said his study agrees with others that there's been "ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica. But in other areas, such as East Antarctica and interior West Antarctica, there's been ice gain.
Zwally added that "Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away."
But, he added that if sea levels are rising 0.27 millimeters a year worldwide and the water is not coming from Antarctic ice melt, it has to be coming from somewhere else that "is not accounted for."
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