A new study has found runaway melt at many coastal glaciers, including ones along the coastlines of Antarctica and Greenland.

Shrinking ice sheets have been spotted in Greenland and western Antarctica, melting faster than scientists had initially believed.Using 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite, the researchers found that by calculating changes in the heights of the ice sheets, they’ve lost approximately thirty feet per year since 2003.

Although some of the sheets are up to mile in thickness, they’ve still a long way to go. But the continuous drop in thickness is getting increasingly worse. Some parts of Antarctica, for example, has grown by 50% since 2003. 81 of the 111 glaciers are experiencing the erosion.

This confirms that the melting around the edges of the ice sheets is in circle of damage: the more it melts, the more water surrounds it and, therefore, melts the remaining ice.

“To some extent it’s a runaway effect. The question is how far will it run?” lead author Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey noted. “It’s more widespread than we previously thought. We were surprised to see such a strong pattern of thinning glaciers across such large areas of coastline,” he added, “and in some cases thinning extends hundreds of kilometers inland.”

The British Agency also noted that the extensive melting is found on all latitudes in Greenland, has increased on most Antarctica coasts, is moving deep into the interior of the ice sheets, and is spreading quickly.

The study still needs to investigate whether this adds to the increase in sea level from global warming. But the size in the ice sheets shows it may take decades.

The main issues lay in the warmer water, as well as the circulation.

“We think that warm ocean currents reaching the coast and melting the glacier front is the most likely cause of faster glacier flow,” Pritchard said. “This kind of ice loss is so poorly understood that it remains the most unpredictable part of future sea level rise.

The study was recently published in the journal Nature.

Image courtesy of forcechange.com

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