Satellite data suggests that the amount of ice that melted from 2010 to 2018 would lead toto
The warming Arctic Ocean appears to be playing a key role in accelerating ice loss from two large island groups bordering the Kara Sea, the researchers say.
The University of Edinburgh team inflicted onmap data collected by the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 research satellite to track changes in surface height and mass in ice caps and glaciers.
Research shows that glaciers and icecaps on two archipelagos in the Russian Arctic are losing enough melt water to fill nearly five million Olympic-size pools each year. As a result of this comparison, the authors found that there is a relationship between the increase in temperature of the atmosphere and ocean and the increase in ice loss on the two archipelagos.
The team's analysis shows that the Novaya Zemlya and Severnaya Zemlya archipelagos, which cover a total area of about 129.5 thousand square kilometers, lost 11.4 billion tons of ice between 2010 and 2018.
Thinning ice has already had a major impact on the stability of some of the region's glaciers and ice caps, which couldFurther increase ice loss in the future, say the authors of the new work.
Research can helppredict future ice loss in regions with similar atmospheric and oceanic temperature patterns; and improve global sea level forecasts.
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