A drifting iceberg (illustration) -

VWPics / SIPA

A news that is cold in the back.

The ice melt has accelerated sharply in three decades, following "worst case scenarios" predicted for the ice sheet and contributing to very severe ocean rise for coastal regions, according to a study led by the British University of Leeds.

The melting rate soared by 65% ​​between 1994 and 2017, according to the study published in the journal

The Cryosphere

, which is based on satellite observations of the cryosphere (glaciers, sea ice, polar caps, etc.).

In total over this period, 28,000 billion tonnes of ice have disappeared, "the equivalent of a layer of ice 100 meters thick covering the whole of the United Kingdom", said the University of Leeds in a statement. published Monday.

"The rate of ice melt on Earth has increased significantly over the past three decades, from 800 billion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tonnes per year in 2017," she detailed.

A “catastrophic” global warming in the 21st century

If all the regions studied are affected by this phenomenon, attributed to an increase in atmospheric and ocean temperatures, the losses are the greatest for the ice of the Arctic Ocean (7.600 billion tonnes) and Antarctica (6.500 billion tonnes). tons).

Mountain glaciers melted 6.1 trillion tonnes.

"The ice caps are now following the worst scenarios of global warming established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" (IPCC), said Thomas Slater, lead author of the study.

"A rise in sea level of this magnitude will have very serious impacts on coastal communities during this century," he added.

These melts indirectly contributed to an overall rise in ocean level of 35 millimeters.

However, "it is estimated that every centimeter of rise in sea level threatens the displacement of about a million people living on lowlands," the statement said.

In mid-January, the UN warned that the world was heading towards “catastrophic” global warming in the 21st century, after 2020 is the hottest in the world, on par with 2016.

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