In only 25 years, ice thinning has spread across West Antarctica so rapidly that now 24% of its glacier ice has become unstable, a new study found.

By analysing satellite images taken between 1992 and 2017, which include over 800 million measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet height, it appeared that snowfall changed ice thickness only to a small extent, and that the most pronounced changes in ice thickness are the result of longer term changes in climate, such as increasing ocean temperatures.

The loss of Antarctic ice has raised the global sea level by 4.6 mm since 1992.

Read the full story: American Geophysical Union
Scientific publication: Geophysical Research Letters