The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting three times faster than 30 years ago, according to research published in the journal Earth Science System Data. The worst melt was in 2019, when the ice sheets lost a combined 675 billion tons, CNN writes.
"This is a huge amount of ice," study lead author Inès Otosaka told CNN. "This is very worrying, of course, because 40 percent of the global population lives in coastal areas." The Greenland sheet has particularly suffered, with study co-author Ruth Mottram calling the figures "disastrous," per The Associated Press.
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"We have what we call some low-probability but high-impact mechanisms that could be triggered if we exceed a certain level of warming," Otosaka told CNN. Rising temperatures due to climate change are responsible for the melting and will lead to a number of irreversible ecological consequences. Each half-degree of temperature rise also greatly exacerbates the issue.
"This is a devastating trajectory," Twila Moon of the National Snow and Ice Center told AP. "These rates of ice loss are unprecedented during modern civilization."
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