The National Snow and Ice Data Center – The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which hold almost all of the world’s freshwater ice, are shrinking at a frighteningly rapid pace, with the seven worst years for polar ice sheet melting all happened during the past decade.
Ice sheet melting has increased six-fold over the past 30 years, as record levels of planet-heating pollution push up global temperatures. And according to new research, the Earth’s ice sheets lost enough ice over the last 30 years to create an ice cube 12 miles high.
The European Space Agency said in a statement: “It is without doubt that climate change is causing our polar ice sheets to melt, thereby driving up sea levels and putting coastal regions around the world at risk.”
