Ice Melting Faster in Greenland, Antarctica: UN Leak

By Alex Morales, September 05, 2013 - Business Week, Bloomberg News

Greenland’s ice added six times more to sea levels in the decade through 2011 than in the prior 10 years, according to a draft of the UN’s most comprehensive study on climate change. Antarctica had a fivefold increase, and the UN is raising its forecast for how much the two ice sheets will add to Earth’s oceans by 2100.  

The changes in the planet’s coldest areas are a “very good indicator” of a warming planet, according to Walt Meier, a research scientist with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.

It’s an early warning system. When you think about a couple of degrees of warming, in the U.K. or U.S., it’s not something that would be too noticeable, whereas in an area of snow and ice, it can have a huge effect. With sea ice, minus 1 to plus 1 is the difference between skating on the ice and swimming in the ocean.