CryoSat

The environmental impacts of iceberg A-68 are still being assessed. A new study has calculated that the largest chunk, A-68A, released billions of tonnes of freshwater into the sea near a marine nature reserve, with untold effects on the ecosystem.

A new study has examined 25 years of satellite data to get a sense of the extent of ice loss across Antarctica. According to the findings, warming waters have destabilized as much as a quarter of the glacier ice in West Antarctica.

The Larson C ice shelf in Antarctica is creeping closer to breaking off, and when it does, it’s set to form one of the biggest icebergs on record. The ESA’s CryoSat is keeping watch from above, and scientists have now estimated the dimensions of this inevitable iceberg and where it might drift.

Both the ESA’s Sentinel-1A and CryoSat satellites have detected a significant degree of ice loss in the Austfonna ice cap, located on Norway’s Nordaustlandet island in the Svalbard archipelago. Parts of the ice cap have thinned by as much as 50 m since 2012 – around a sixth of its total thickness.

ESA’s CryoSat mission has recorded a slight decrease in Arctic sea ice thickness over previous measurements. The data flies in the face of the previous downward trend, which was much greater, but is unlikely to indicate a shift in the accepted pattern of degradation.

An analysis of data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) CryoSat satellite shows that ice loss in the Antarctic is increasing at an exponential rate. It is estimated that the polar region now loses 159 billion tonnes of ice each year.