Doyle Rice

USA TODAY

The melt rate of glaciers in west Antarctica has tripled in the past 10 years due in large part to global warming, according to a new study.

That surge means the glaciers lost a Mount Everest-sized amount of water every two years over the past 21 years, at roughly a mass of 91.5 billion tons per year, according to scientists at NASA and the University of California-Irvine.

"The mass loss of these glaciers is increasing at an amazing rate," study co-author and scientist Isabella Velicogna of University of California-Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.

The glaciers are hemorrhaging ice faster than any other part of Antarctica and "will significantly contribute to sea-level rise in decades to centuries to come," according to the study.

The study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, used four separate sets of measurements mainly from NASA and European Space Agency satellites to determine the ice loss from 1992 to 2013.

The measurements were done on a part of the Antarctic known as the "Amundsen Sea embayment," an ice sheet that flows into the sea.



The ice in the glaciers is freshwater land ice, which is different from Antarctic sea ice, Velicogna said. Antarctic sea ice was at record high levels this year.

Sea ice is frozen ocean water that melts each summer, then refreezes each winter and is not responsible for sea-level rise. It's like an ice cube in a glass — if it melts, it doesn't affect sea level rise, according to Climate Progress, a climate blog.

The melting of glacial land ice, however, does impact sea-level rise.

Velicogna said that glacier and ice sheet behavior worldwide remains the greatest uncertainty in predicting future sea level.