Three major lines of evidence point to the glaciers' eventual demise: the changes in their flow speeds, how much of each glacier floats on seawater, and the slope of the terrain they are flowing over and its depth below sea level. "A conservative estimate is it could take several centuries for all of the ice to flow into the sea." "This sector will be a major contributor to sea level rise in the decades and centuries to come," Rignot said. Rignot said these findings will require an upward revision to current predictions of sea level rise. They contain enough ice to raise global sea level by 4 feet (1.2 meters) and are melting faster than most scientists had expected. These glaciers already contribute significantly to sea level rise, releasing almost as much ice into the ocean annually as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet. The new study has been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The study presents multiple lines of evidence, incorporating 40 years of observations that indicate the glaciers in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica "have passed the point of no return," according to glaciologist and lead author Eric Rignot, of UC Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. A new study by researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine, finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea.
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