[JohnVK]

Height of Antarctica ice sheet increasing

Saturday, March 31st 2012 - 23:40 UTC

According to findings come from the Europe’s Space Administration ESA’s ice-measuring satellite, CryoSat, over the last two years Antarctica’s ice sheet has increased in height.

In a press release ESA announced that the measurements from their 2010-2011 campaigns show the height of Antarctic ice to be an average of nine centimetres higher than the measurements obtained during the 2008-2009 campaigns.

ESA says these findings not only provide good news from the ice sheets, but also show the effectiveness of the CryoSat missions.
CryoSat is an ESA programme to monitor variations in the extent and thickness of polar ice through use of a satellite in a low Earth orbit. The information provided about the behaviour of coastal glaciers that drain thinning ice sheets will be essential to better predictions of future sea-level rise.
According to the ESA website, http://www.esa.int, CryoSat is the first scientific mission to address the thickness of land and sea ice and how this thickness is changing.
CryoSat took its measurements from a particularly harsh area of land in Antarctica, a plateau known as the “blue ice region” on the edge of the continent. This region is unique due to its vast expanses of polished blue ice.

http://en.mercopress.com/2012/03/31/...eet-increasing