East Antarctica has sometimes been a focus of attention for people who deny the science of global warming. “A lot of the argument has been made from stakeholders that are not quite as interested in dealing with climate change that the East Antarctic ice sheet is actually gaining mass — therefore we don’t need to worry,” said Michele Koppes, a glaciologist at the University of British Columbia who was not involved with the study.

East Antarctica, which makes up two-thirds of the continent, is a remote region of an already remote location, where data is scarcer because there are fewer measurement stations, Dr. Koppes said. Researchers must extrapolate a smaller amount of data over an area the size of the United States, which can make the analysis less precise.

To get around those problems in this study, more than 80 researchers from around the world collected data from about a dozen different satellite measurements dating to the early 1990s.

“We used different satellite missions and techniques because the various approaches we have at arriving at this number have different strengths and weaknesses,” Dr. Shepherd said. “And we find that by combining all of the available measurements we can iron out the problems that individual techniques have.”

The researchers concluded that the changes in East Antarctica were not nearly enough to make up for the rapid loss seen in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula. Antarctica is, on balance, losing its ice sheets and raising the world’s sea levels.