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If the warming has stayed the same over this period,

July 7, 2017 by Ella Pickett

If the warming has stayed the same over this period, then the ice in the basin may have been too cold, or was too long in the past.

The data, which appear in the December issue of Geophysical Research Letters, found that even the most massive ice sheets, such as the Antarctica Peninsula, had an impressive ability to withstand much shorter periods of ice sheet retreat than are found in the region.

Now, though, we might be missing something: What was the average length of ice in these regions during the last ice age? According to the new study, the rate of ice loss, a measure of the amount of ice that is lost from an area over a given time period, has increased by about 25 percent over the last 40,000 years.

Why? The research suggests that in many parts of the world, the rates of ice loss have increased through climate change, particularly in warmer regions like Antarctica. For instance, it's the case in the US that the rate of ice loss has risen by about 35 percent between the last ice age and 2050, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a national non-profit. In China, the rate has risen by more than 10 percent in the last 20 years, according to the Beijing Climate Commission.

Of course, that's not to say that the US has not been affected by climate change. As the paper points out, the US's rate of ice loss has doubled since the 1970s, and the rate of ice loss in many other parts of the world has doubled, too.

But other than that, it's important to note that the glaciers in the ice sheet that are most likely to melt are not necessarily the ones we should be worried about. "It's hard to see how we can put an exact estimate on the number of glaciers that are in a glacier that's overactive, which is why we use the term 'missing'," Rennie writes.

"We should be concerned about the effects of the warming that is occurring in the ice sheet because we may lose this ice that is used for many different purposes," he adds.

"As a society, we have to start doing more to mitigate these impacts," she continues. "We should be mindful of what we have to do to protect our communities from these effects."

The study is in its early stages, and it's not clear when it