GEOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS:

A recent article in the science journal Nature reported that 40% of the 3 trillion tons of ice shed by Antarctica over the last 25 years has been lost in the last 5 years. "At its current rate, Antarctica's ice loss will add six inches to sea-levels by 2100, which is in the upper range of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates Antarctica will contribute to sea level rise, and translates to serious impacts on Earth. 'Around Brooklyn you get flooding once a year or so, but if you raise sea level by 15 centimeters then that’s going to happen 20 times a year,' Andrew Shepherd, a professor of earth observation at the University of Leeds and the lead author of the study told the New York Times. ... The study also helped clarify the ambiguity regarding ice loss in different regions in Antarctica. While West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula has been losing ice for a long time, East Antarctica has experienced a mix of ice gain and loss, which some has cited as a reason not to worry about global warming. The latest study emphasizes that the variations in East Antarctica are not nearly enough to make up for the rapid loss throughout the rest of the continent." www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a21577520/antarctica-melting-way-faster-anyone-expected/