News in Brief Climate

Antarctic ice shelves rapidly melting

Once-expanding East Antarctica now seeing losses

Venable Ice Shelf

MELTDOWN   Antarctica’s Venable Ice Shelf, shown, is on track to disappear within a century, new research shows.

JPL-Caltech/NASA, UC Irvine

By Thomas Sumner

- More than 2 years ago

Antarctica’s ice shelves are shrinking at an accelerating rate, one of the longest satellite records of ice thickness reveals. Researchers report online March 26 in Science that several West Antarctic ice shelves are now on pace to disappear completely within 100 years.