Observations from 11 satellite missions monitoring the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have revealed that the regions are losing ice six times faster than they were in the 1990s.

Together, the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets contain more than 99 percent of the freshwater ice on Earth. Credit: NSIDC. An ice sheet is a mass of glacial land ice extending more than 50,000 square kilometers (20,000 square miles). The two ice sheets on Earth today cover most of Greenland and Antarctica.

With the exception of the northern and southern Antarctic Peninsula, the Antarctic melt season for 2020 to 2021 was unremarkable and below the 1990 to 2020 average.

The melting of ice across the planet is accelerating at a record rate, with the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets speeding up the fastest, research has found.

April 1, 2021. The Antarctic ice sheet’s mass has changed over the last decades. Research based on satellite data indicates that between 2002 and 2020, Antarctica shed an average of 149 billion metric tons of ice per year, adding to global sea level rise.

They pay the most attention in September when Arctic sea ice shrinks to its smallest extent each year. But observations show that ice extent in the Arctic has shrunk faster than models predicted, and in the Antarctic it has been growing slightly.

This changing sea ice extent is cited by the IPCC as an indicator of a warming world. However, sea ice extent is growing in Antarctica [1]. In fact, it’s recently broken a record for maximum extent.

There is no evidence that any significant region of Antarctic has been cooling over the long term, except in fall. In a 2016 paper, Turner and others point out that if one considers just the last ~18 years, the trend on the Antarctic Peninsula has been cooling.

Tens of million years ago, sand tiger sharks hunted in the waters off the Antarctic Peninsula, gliding over a thriving marine ecosystem on the seafloor below. That current, which flows around Antarctica today, traps cold waters in the Southern Ocean, keeping Antarctica cold and frozen.

So perhaps it won’t come as a surprise to hear that Antarctica is also the only continent without an indigenous human population. Although there are no native Antarcticans and no permanent residents or citizens of Antarctica, many people do live in Antarctica each year.

Seals and sea lions are one of the few groups of marine mammals that live in the Antarctic. Six different species of seal live in Antarctic waters: Ross, Weddell, crabeater, leopard, fur and elephant seals.

How long do Antarctic Fur Seals live? Antarctic Fur Seal Males tend to live about 15 years, while females live to about 25 years on average.

Returning South Georgia to “predator-free” status was essential because, as there are no trees on the island, all of its unique birds – including the pintail and the South Georgia pipit, the only songbird in Antarctic waters – nest on the ground, meaning they are vulnerable to decimation by rodent invaders.