Planet Earth - Antarctic Peninsula: Measuring rapid ice melt and sea rise

During the AirSAR 2004 campaign, an international team of scientists used NASA's DC-8 airborne laboratory to survey the Larsen Ice Shelf and the Antarctic Peninsula. Since 1950, atmospheric temperatures across the peninsula have increased by about two degrees Celsius, sparking the rapid retreat of floating ice shelves and shrinking glaciers. Because it spans one hundred and twenty thousand square kilometers and receives heavy precipitation, melting from this region could contribute up to zero point four millimeters per year to global sea level rise.

Source: NASA