This image of Antarctica’s Getz Ice Shelf has been compiled using radar images from Copernicus Sentinel-1 acquired between January and September 2023.
New research, based largely on information from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and ESA’s CryoSat satellite missions, has revealed alarming findings about the state of Antarctica's ice shelves: 40% of these floating shelves have significantly reduced in volume over the past quarter-century. While this underscores the accelerating impacts of climate change on the world's southernmost continent, the picture of ice deterioration is mixed.
Getz Ice Shelf experienced some of the biggest ice losses, where 1.9 trillion tonnes of ice were lost over the 25-year study period. Just 5% of this was caused by calving, where large chunks of ice breakaway from the shelf and move into the ocean. The rest was due to melting at the base of the ice shelf.
In contrast, most of the ice shelves on the eastern side of Antarctica remained intact or increased in mass.
Read full story: Antarctic ice shelf demise