Image credit: NASA/Earth Observatory
Until recently, scientists have been uncertain about how the biggest mass of ice in the world - Antarctica - has been losing ice to the oceans. Previously, it was thought that Antarctica was losing ice via the process of calving, when enormous chunks of ice break off from the continent and fall into the surrounding ocean. New modelling and research has revealed that in fact, the culprit is a warming ocean and calving is only partly to blame. As it turns out, scientists ought to have been looking under the water at the ice shelves, to understand the melting process. By doing so, scientists have discovered that 55% of all ice loss in the Antarctic between 2003 and 2008 can be attributed to melting under the ice shelves.
Read more about this phenomenon in Live Science: