Glaciologist Robert Bindschadler ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center intends to show just that. He's leading an expedition scheduled to start in 2011 to drill through the Pine Island Glacier and place an automated buoy into the water below it. According to Bindschadler, Pine Island Glacier "is the place to go because that is where the changes are the largest. If we want to understand how the ocean is impacting the ice sheet, go to where it's hitting the ice sheet with a sledgehammer, not with a little tack hammer."
Meanwhile, measurements from the Grace satellites confirm that Antarctica is losing mass 11. Isabella Velicogna ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ JPL and the University ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ California, Irvine, uses Grace data to weigh the Antarctic ice sheet from space. Her work shows that the ice sheet is not ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ losing mass, but it is losing mass at an accelerating rate. "The important message is that it is not a linear trend. A linear trend means you have the same mass loss every year. The fact that it’s above linear, this is the important idea, that ice loss is increasing with time," she says. And she points out that it isn’t just the Grace data that show accelerating loss; the radar data do, too. "It isn't just one type ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ measurement. It's a series ************SPAM/BANNEAR************ independent measurements that are giving the same results, which makes it more robust."
NASA - Is Antarctica Melting?