We Know West Antarctica Is Melting. Is the East In Danger, Too?
For years, scientists thought that icy, remote East Antarctic glaciers were stable. But that may no longer be the case.
Along the coast of West Antarctica, glaciers are retreating at alarming rates, crumbling as warm waters chew at their fragile edges.
But for years, scientists thought that the glaciers of East Antarctica—the hulking ice sheet on the other half of the continent, nearly three miles thick in some parts—were stable. Recently, though, evidence has emerged that shows that some of the East Antarctic glaciers have also started on a slow, inexorable backward march that could eventually lead to the loss of even more ice than exists in all of West Antarctica. [Here’s how to define East vs. West at the bottom of the world].
In a study published in July, scientists found that the Totten and Moscow University glaciers
