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Antarctic ice shelves retreating

By Sandy Bauers, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Source: MCT News Service

The U.S. Geological Survey recently reported that ice shelves are retreating in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula, and the researchers said it is due to climate change. They said it could result in glacier retreat and sea-level rise if warming continues.

The agency says the research is the first to document that every ice front in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula has been retreating overall from 1947 to 2009, with the most dramatic changes occurring since 1990.

	 "This research is part of a larger ongoing USGS project that is for the

first time studying the entire Antarctic coastline in detail, and this is important because the Antarctic ice sheet contains 91 percent of Earth's glacier ice," USGS scientist Jane Ferrigno said in a press release. "The loss of ice shelves is evidence of the effects of global warming. We need to be alert and continually understand and observe how our climate system is changing."

The report, "Coastal-Change and Glaciological Map of the Palmer Land Area, Antarctica: 1947 _ 2009" and its accompanying map is available here: http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i-2600-c/.

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