Surf's up...maybe earlier than we expected

Antarctica isn't getting any hotter. Yet its ice sheet is melting faster than expected, according to a story in today's Washington Post, raising the prospect of more rapid sea level rise.

Researchers discovered "that the rate of ice loss in the affected areas has accelerated over the past 10 years -- as it has on most glaciers and ice sheets around the world," the Post reports.

"Without doubt, Antarctica as a whole is now losing ice yearly, and each year it's losing more," said Eric Rignot, lead author of a paper on the subject that was published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The Post says the change in Antarctica "could become considerably more dramatic because the continent's western shelf, an expanse of ice and snow roughly the size of Texas, is largely below sea level and has broad and flat expanses of ice that could move quickly."

But if the Antarctic's land temperature is the same, why would its glaciers melt? "Something must be changing the ocean to trigger such changes," said Rignot, a senior scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We believe it is related to global climate forcing."

To read the full Post story, click here. For a look at the scientific paper, click here. (Fair warning: the scientific paper costs $18 to download.)

--Craig Pittman