Scenes from Space #24

Is the Antartic ice sheet melting? Climatologists think global warming may be melting the ice that encases our southernmost continent. The orbiting GRACE satellite has taken extremely sensitive measurements of the Earth's gravity, and the data suggests that Antartica may have lost a significant amount of ice between 2002 and 2005. While they calculate that this ice would only have raised the world's oceans by a fraction of an inch, that it a LOT more water than it sounds like - almost 40 trillion gallons. In the image below is a picture of one of the icebergs along the Antartic coast.