June 5, 2007 — Hundreds of glaciers in the Antarctic peninsula are flowing faster, adding to a rise in sea levels, British experts said on Tuesday as they pointed the finger of blame at global warming.
In a study coincidentally released on the eve of the Group of Eight (G8) summit, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) reported a 12-percent increase in the speed of over 300 glaciers monitored by satellite between 1993 and 2003.
It is already accepted that global warming is causing more snow to melt in the Antarctic summer and that coastal ice shelves are retreating.
The new study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, found that the glaciers picked up speed as they headed towards the sea.
As the glaciers thinned, their meltwater acted as a lubricant between the ice and the underlying rock bed, reducing friction.
The work focused on glaciers in a 800-mile tongue of land which juts out from Antarctics toward South America and is a closely watched barometer of climate change.
"The Antarctic peninsula has experienced some of the fastest warming on Earth, nearly three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last half-century," said Hamish Pritchard, the main author of the study, which confirms recent findings in Greenland.
