Climate change: West Antarctica's Getz glaciers flowing faster - BBC News

Scientists have just taken a detailed look at the ice streams flowing into the ocean along a 1,000km-stretch of coastline known as the Getz region.

It incorporates 14 glaciers - and they've all speeded up.

Since 1994, they've lost 315 gigatonnes of ice - equivalent to 126 million Olympic swimming pools of water.

If you put this in the context of the Antarctic continent's contribution to global sea-level rise over the same period, Getz accounts for just over 10% of the total - a little under a millimetre.

"This is the first time anyone has done a really detailed study of this area of West Antarctica.

"But it's really important we understand what's going on there - to recognise its glaciers are speeding up and the reason why," she told BBC News.

To this analysis, they added information about ocean properties immediately offshore of Getz - along with the outputs of a model that put the local climate in context over the period.

Relatively warm deep ocean water is getting under the glaciers' floating fronts and melting them from below.

Pierre Dutrieux, a study co-author at British Antarctic Survey, said: "We know that warmer ocean waters are eroding many of West Antarctica's glaciers, and these new observations demonstrate the impact this is having on the Getz region.

It's interesting to note that in the case of Getz, this platform receives a certain stability from pressing up against eight islands and a number of shallow points on the seabed.

"We're understanding how ocean water is moving around underneath the ice shelf - how and where it's getting in to that cavity under the shelf, so that we can really tie the physical process of ocean forcing to the signal we see in the satellite data.".