Fresh water from melting glaciers has caused the sea-level around the coast of Antarctica to rise by 2 cm more than the global average of 6 cm, a new study of satellite data from the last 19 years has found.
Researchers at the University of Southampton detected the rapid rise in sea-level by studying satellite scans of a region that spans more than a million square kilometres.
The melting of the Antarctic ice sheet and the thinning of floating ice shelves has contributed an excess of around 350 gigatonnes of freshwater to the surrounding ocean.
Also Read
This has led to a reduction in the salinity of the surrounding oceans that has been corroborated by ship-based studies of the water, researchers said.
"Freshwater is less dense than salt water and so in regions where an excess of freshwater has accumulated we expect a localised rise in sea level," said Craig Rye, lead author of the paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
In addition to satellite observations, the researchers also conducted computer simulations of the effect of melting glaciers on the Antarctic Ocean.
The results of the simulation closely mirrored the real-world picture presented by the satellite data.
The computer model supports our theory that the sea-level rise we see in our satellite data is almost entirely caused by freshening (a reduction in the salinity of the water) from the melting of the ice sheet and its fringing ice shelves," said Rye.
"The interaction between air, sea and ice in these seas is central to the stability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and global sea levels, as well as other environmental processes, such as the generation of Antarctic bottom water, which cools and ventilates much of the global ocean abyss," Rye said.
