According to a new study, polar ice is melting at an alarming rate and is responsible for 25% of sea level rise. The research, published in Earth System Science Data,

reveals that ice melt has increased by a factor of five since the 1990s, with seven of the worst years occurring in the past decade.

The research is the result of a decade-long international collaboration between dozens of institutions called IMBIE (Ice sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise), which compiled 50 satellite surveys of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets between 1992 and 2020 to quantify the extent of ice loss.

During this time, over 7,500 billion tonnes of ice have disappeared across both regions, equivalent to a 20-cubic-kilometer chunk of ice. The study's lead researcher, Dr. Inès Otosaka from Leeds University, warns that continuous monitoring of the ice sheets is needed to forecast their behavior and plan human adaptation.

If melting continues at the current rate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that 148-272 millimeters of sea level rise could be solely attributed to this phenomenon. So far, polar ice melt has already contributed 21mm to sea level rise since 1992. Photo by Matti&Keti, Wikimedia commons.