NASA Study Shows Antarctic Ice Growth Despite Rising Global Temperatures: How It Happened

Antarctica has gained some ice in certain areas despite global warming, NASA satellites have discovered. Researchers said that the continent lost several ice sheets in the past two decades, but it gained back a little from 2021 to 2023.

A study published in March in the Journal Science China Earth Sciences by researchers from Tongji University in Shanghai found that the recent rise in Antarctica's ice was not because of reversing climate change but likely due to extra precipitation leading to the formation of more ice.

Researchers said the ice levels in Antarctica naturally fluctuate each year, but the growth slowed down by early 2024. While a recent study reveals that Antarctica hasn't recovered all the ice lost between 2002 and 2020, the ice levels are now back to what they were in 2020.

Tom Slater, a research fellow in environmental science at Northumbria University in the UK who wasn't involved in the study, said, "This isn't particularly strange."

When the climate gets warmer, it holds more moisture, he told Live Science. This increases the chance of extreme weather like heavy snowfall, he added. So, this could be the reason for the recent mass gain in Antarctica, he said.

He said that since the majority of Antarctica's ice is still melting and glaciers are moving more quickly into the warmer ocean, the recent increase in ice may only be transitory. "While the recent snowfall has temporarily offset these losses, they haven't stopped, so it's not expected that this is a long-term change in Antarctica's behaviour," he said. 

According to the new study, Antarctica lost over 81 billion tons of ice annually between 2002 and 2010, and between 2011 and 2020, that amount nearly doubled to 157 billion tons annually.

So, between 2021 and 2023, the ice sheet's mass increased at an average annual pace of almost 119 billion tons. Additionally, four glaciers in eastern Antarctica experienced a considerable mass gain after experiencing accelerated ice loss.