East Antarctic Ice Sheet Gains Mass and Slows Sea Level Rise, Study Finds

Results Reported in Online Edition of Science Suggest Increasing Snowfall is Likely Cause

Current estimates indicate that the global sea level is rising due to global warming and the shrinkage of terrestrial, or land-based, ice. Recent scientific studies have shown that a variety of terrestrial ice sources, such as the Greenland ice sheet, the West Antarctic ice sheet and Alaskan mountain glaciers, are contributing significant amounts to the global sea-level rise. However, in a study to appear in this week's online edition of Science, a researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia has found that the interior of the East Antarctic ice sheet is actually gaining mass.