108 billion tons per year: Antarctica witnesses sudden rise in glacier ice
As climate change continues to batter the world with extreme weather events occurring from the US to India, there is a surprising new trend observed on one end of the planet - Antarctica.Scientists have noted a surprising jump in the Antarctic ice for the first time in decades, according to a new study published by Science China Earth Sciences.The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) mission and its successor, GRACE-FO (GRACE Follow-On) satellites have observed a rise in the ice mass across the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Winter sea ice cover in the Arctic has reached an unprecedented low. (Photo: AFP)
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The study led by Dr. Wang and Prof. Shen at Tongji University has found that between 2021 and 2023, the ice sheet experienced a record-breaking increase in overall mass.Antarctica experienced a moderate increase in sea ice until 2015, followed by a sharp decline starting in 2016.Tongji University researchers say satellite gravimetry data shows that from 2011 to 2020, the Antarctic Ice Sheet lost 142 gigatons of ice per year. That trend flipped between 2021 and 2023 when the ice sheet allegedly gained about 108 gigatons of ice per year. From 2002 to 2010, Antarctica's ice sheet was losing about 74 billion tons of ice per year. From 2011 to 2020, the loss nearly doubled to about 142 billion tons per year, mainly because of faster ice melting in West Antarctica and parts of East Antarctica.advertisementBut things changed after that — between 2021 and 2023, Antarctica actually gained ice at a rate of about 108 billion tons per year, mostly due to unusually high snowfall.While Antarctica is gaining, researchers earlier highlighted the trend is not visible in the Arctic. Winter sea ice cover in the Arctic has reached an unprecedented low at its annual peak, according to recent data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).Nasa said that on March 22, 2025, the maximum extent of Arctic sea ice was recorded at 14.33 million square kilometres, falling below the previous record low of 14.41 million square kilometres set in 2017.Trending Reel
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