Antarctica gains ice for first time in decades, reversing trend of mass loss, study finds
The Antarctic Ice Sheet gained mass between 2021 and 2023, a dramatic reversal from decades of loss.
Four key glacier basins in East Antarctica showed significant growth due to increased snowfall.
The mass gain briefly contributed to a decrease in global sea level rise, according to satellite data.
A surprising shift is underway at the bottom of the world. After decades of contributing to rising sea levels, Antarctica's massive ice sheet has started growing again — at least for now.
A study published this week in Science China Earth Sciences finds that the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) experienced a record-breaking mass gain between 2021 and 2023, largely due to anomalous increases in precipitation. The rebound is especially significant in East Antarctica, where four major glacier basins had previously shown signs of destabilization.
Big picture view
Researchers from Tongji University and other institutions analyzed satellite gravimetry data from the GRACE and GRACE-FO missions, which measure variations in Earth's gravity to detect changes in ice mass.
They found that between 2011 and 2020, the AIS was losing ice at a rate of 142 gigatons per year. But between 2021 and 2023, the trend reversed, with the ice sheet gaining approximately 108 gigatons per year — a historic turnaround.
That growth was enough to temporarily offset global sea level rise by about 0.3 millimeters per year during the same period.
The most notable gains were in East Antarctica's Wilkes Land and Queen Mary Land region, including the Totten, Denman, Moscow University, and Vincennes Bay glacier basins. These glaciers had been losing mass at an accelerating rate from 2011 to 2020 — driven by surface melting and faster ice discharge into the ocean — but now appear to have partially recovered.
Scientists warn, however, that this shift doesn't mean the climate crisis is over. The gains were linked to unusual precipitation patterns, which may be temporary.
What's next
The Antarctic Ice Sheet holds more than half of the world's fresh water. For decades, it's been one of the largest contributors to sea level rise, alongside Greenland's melting ice and thermal expansion of warming oceans.
This new period of growth is both a surprise and a reminder of how dynamic and sensitive polar regions are to climate shifts. If similar conditions persist, they could reshape near-term sea level predictions. But most scientists stress the rebound is likely temporary unless supported by larger climatic trends.
The Source
This story is based on the peer-reviewed study "Spatiotemporal mass change rate analysis from 2002 to 2023 over the Antarctic Ice Sheet and four glacier basins in Wilkes-Queen Mary Land" published March 19, 2025, in Science China Earth Sciences. This story was reported from Los Angeles.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hypebeast
2 days ago
- Hypebeast
Ryan Gosling Takes on the Universe in Amazon's 'Project Hail Mary' Trailer
Summary The highly anticipated first trailer forAmazon MGM Studios'Project Hail Mary, starring Academy Award nomineeRyan Gosling, has officially landed, offering a thrilling glimpse into humanity's last-ditch effort to save the sun. This sci-fi adventure-comedy, based on Andy Weir's best-selling novel (author ofThe Martian), promises a unique blend of scientific ingenuity, harrowing space travel, and unexpected humor. The trailer introduces Gosling as Ryland Grace, a reluctant astronaut and middle-school science teacher who awakens from a coma aboard a spaceship light-years from Earth, with no memory of his mission. As his memories gradually return, he pieces together the dire reality: he is the sole survivor of a desperate mission to investigate why all stars, including Earth's sun, are mysteriously dying. Grace, far from a seasoned astronaut, repeatedly protests his qualifications, quipping, 'I put the 'not' in astronaut!' The trailer quickly reveals a pivotal element from Weir's novel: Grace is not entirely alone. He soon encounters an extraterrestrial life form named Rocky, a five-legged, rock-like alien who becomes his unexpected companion. This budding friendship adds layers of poignancy and comedy to the high-stakes mission, as the two unlikely allies must combine their scientific knowledge to save both their home planets from a cosmic catastrophe. The trailer cleverly teases Rocky's appearance, hinting at his unique design without fully revealing him, building anticipation for this fan-favorite character. 'Project Hail Mary boasts an impressive creative team behind its ambitious narrative. Directed by the acclaimed duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (known forSpider-Man: Into the Spider-VerseandThe Lego Movie), and with a screenplay by Drew Goddard (who also adapted Weir'sThe Martian), the film is poised to deliver a captivating blend of spectacle and storytelling. The cast also includes Sandra Hüller, Lionel Boyce, and Ken Leung. Having played Neil Armstrong in 2018's First Man, Gosling is no stranger to space, and his comedic timing showcased in the trailer, combined with the film's grand Hail Maryis set for theatrical release on March 20, 2026.
Time Magazine
3 days ago
- Time Magazine
In the Loop: Is AI Making the Next Pandemic More Likely?
Welcome back to In the Loop, TIME's new twice-weekly newsletter about AI. Starting today, we'll be publishing these editions both as stories on and as emails. If you're reading this in your browser, why not subscribe to have the next one delivered straight to your inbox? Subscribe to In the Loop What to Know If you talk to staff at the top AI labs, you'll hear a lot of stories about how the future could go fantastically well—or terribly badly. And of all the ways that AI might cause harm to the human race, there's one that scientists in the industry are particularly worried about today. That's the possibility of AI helping bad actors to start a new pandemic. 'You could try to synthesize something like COVID or a more dangerous version of the flu—and basically, our modeling suggests that this might be possible,' Anthropic's chief scientist, Jared Kaplan, told me in May. Measuring the risk — In a new study published this morning, and shared exclusively with TIME ahead of its release, we got the first hard numbers on how experts think the risk of a new pandemic might have increased thanks to AI. The Forecasting Research Institute polled experts earlier this year, asking them how likely a human-caused pandemic might be—and how likely it might become if humans had access to AI that could reliably give advice on how to build a bioweapon. What they found — Experts, who were polled between December and February, put the risk of a human-caused pandemic at 0.3% per year. But, they said, that risk would jump fivefold, to 1.5% per year, if AI were able to provide human-level virology advice. You can guess where this is going — Then, in April, the researchers tested today's AI tools on a new virology troubleshooting benchmark. They found that today's AI tools outperform PhD-level virologists at complex troubleshooting tasks in the lab. In other words, AI can now do the very thing that forecasters warned would increase the risk of a human-caused pandemic fivefold. We just published the full story on can read it here. Who to Know Person in the news – Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare. Since its founding in 2009, Cloudflare has been protecting sites on the internet from being knocked offline by large influxes of traffic, or indeed coordinated attacks. Now, some 20% of the internet is covered by its network. And today, Cloudflare announced that this network would begin to block AI crawlers by default — essentially putting a fifth of the internet behind a paywall for the bots that harvest info to train AIs like ChatGPT and Claude. Step back — Today's AI is so powerful because it has essentially inhaled the whole of the internet — from my articles to your profile photos. By running neural networks over that data using immense quantities of computing power, AI companies have taught these systems the texture of the world at such an enormous scale that it has given rise to new AI capabilities, like the ability to answer questions on almost any topic, or to generate photorealistic images. But this scraping has sparked a huge backlash from publishers, artists and writers, who complain that it has been done without any consent or compensation. A new model — Cloudflare says the move will 'fundamentally change how AI companies access web content going forward.' Major publishers, including TIME, have expressed their support for the shift toward an 'opt-in' rather than an 'opt-out' system, the company says. Cloudflare also says it is working on a new initiative, called Pay Per Crawl, in which creators will have the option of setting a price on their data in return for making it available to train AI. Fighting words — Prince was not available for an interview this week. But at a recent conference, he disclosed that traffic to news sites had dropped precipitously across the board thanks to AI, in a shift that many worry will imperil the existence of the free press. 'I go to war every single day with the Chinese government, the Russian government, the Iranians, the North Koreans, probably Americans, the Israelis — all of them who are trying to hack into our customer sites,' Prince said. 'And you're telling me I can't stop some nerd with a C-corporation in Palo Alto?' AI in Action 61% percent of U.S. adults have used AI in the last six months, and 19% interact with it daily, according to a new survey of AI adoption by the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. But just 3% percent of those users pay for access to the software, Menlo estimated based on the survey's results—suggesting 97% of users only use the free tier of AI tools. AI usage figures are higher for Americans in the workforce than other groups. Some 75% of employed adults have used AI in the last six months, including 26% who report using it daily, according to the survey. Students also report high AI usage: 85% have used it in the last six months, and 22% say they use it daily. The statistics seem to suggest that some students and workers are growing dependent on free AI tools—a usage pattern that might become lucrative if AI companies were to begin restricting access or raising prices. However, the proliferation of open-source AI models has created intense price competition that may limit any single company's ability to dramatically increase their costs. As always, if you have an interesting story of AI in Action, we'd love to hear it. Email us at: intheloop@ What we're reading 'The Dead Have Never Been This Talkative': The Rise of AI Resurrection by Tharin Pillay in TIME With the rise of image-to-video tools like the newest version of Midjourney, the world recently crossed a threshold: it's now possible, in just a few clicks, to reanimate a photo of your dead relative. You can train a chatbot on snippets of their writing to replicate their patterns of speech; if you have a long enough clip of them speaking, you can also replicate their voice. Will these tools make it easier to process the heart-rending pain of bereavement? Or might their allure in fact make it harder to move forward? My colleague Tharin published a deeply insightful piece last week about the rise of this new technology. It's certainly a weird time to be alive. Or, indeed, to be dead. Subscribe to In the Loop
Geek Girl Authority
3 days ago
- Geek Girl Authority
Hailing Frequencies Open: 3 STAR TREK Podcasts
There are many Star Trek options for you to listen to wherever you get your podcasts. In fact, there are so many that it can be daunting to figure out where to start. For today's Trek Tuesday , we're sharing three podcasts that we enjoy. This just scratches the surface of the many podcasts devoted to our favorite Franchise. If there's one that you think we should check out in the future, be sure and let us know on social media! Women at Warp Women at Warp has a decade's worth of episodes to occupy your time. The podcast debuted in 2014. At that time the four originating hosts — Andi, Grace, Jarrah and Sue — were each doing their own online Franchise projects. But they came together to form a kind of 'Federation,' creating the Women at Warp podcast. Focused on examining Star Trek through a feminist perspective, Women at Warp explored 'Intersectional Diversity in Infinite Combinations.' In 2020, they added two more hosts to their command crew: Aliza and Kennedy. RELATED: Star Trek : 8 Women of Vulcan Over the course of the podcast's run, Women at Warp had a few different associations. From May 2014 to July 2016, Women at Warp was part of the network. And then from April 2017 through 2022, they were one of the three founding shows for Roddenberry Entertainment's Roddenberry Podcast Network. But during the other intervals, Women at Warp was an independent podcast. In March 2025, the series achieved its mission and released its final episode. However, there are a decade's worth of episodes for you to catch up on. And several of them feature guest appearances by one of Geek Girl Authority's own beloved writers, Diana Keng. In addition to the podcast, Women at Warp hosts a blog where you can read lots of articles about the Franchise, including reviews, features and more. InvestiGates Gates McFadden (Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Next Generation movies, Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Picard) is the host of the delicious Star Trek adjacent podcast, InvestiGates . Over the course of the three seasons released so far, McFadden invites many of her Franchise co-stars and co-creators to join her in some in-depth discussions. In these conversations, Star Trek is brought up from time to time. However, the podcast is not limited to discussion about the Franchise. McFadden asks her guests about their personal histories and childhoods, family histories and many other topics as well. The eclectic conversations are far-reaching and informative, including details you would never think to ask but will not forget once you've heard them. RELATED: Geek Girl Authority Crush of the Week: Beverly Crusher Over the course of InvestiGates, McFadden is joined by almost every main cast member of The Next Generation. She's also joined by cast members from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise . In later episodes, she welcomes cast members from Star Trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Plus Terry Matalas, Michael Westmore and William Shatner appear as well. If you want to learn more about the people who put Star Trek together, then InvestiGates is the podcast for you. Hopefully, McFadden will release additional episodes in the near future. Trek, Marry, Kill Podcast In the Trek, Marry, Kill Podcast, host Bryan Murphy and a rotating guest host examine the Franchise episode by episode. At the end of each discussion, they rate the episode. They might be good ('Trek'), great ('Marry'), or 'neither good nor great' ('Kill'). However, the podcast is always clear that even when an episode is a 'Kill,' they still love it, because it's Star Trek. Along with the hook of determining whether each episode is a 'Trek,' 'Marry' or 'Kill,' the podcast also features a recurring rubric against which episodes are assessed. This includes great scenes, 'The Line Must Be Drawn Here: Great lines' and other regular assessment standards. RELATED: Star Trek Episode Trilogy: Revisiting 'Unification' In addition to the assessment, Murphy also brings plenty of facts about the episodes from Memory Alpha and other sources. And the audio for the contemporary TV advertisements for the individual episodes is often included, which adds a nice bit of additional flavor to the mix. As with Women at Warp , Geek Girl Authority's own Diana Keng guest stars on Trek, Marry, Kill Podcast as well. And she's just one of the many great guest stars who appear over the course of the series. Finally, when the host and guest disagree on the show's categorization, the tie is turned over to social media for a vote, so weekly listeners can get in on the voting fun too. STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS: 'Ad Astra Per Aspera,' a Trans Rights Allegory Avery Kaplan (she/her) is the author of several books and the Features Editor at Comics Beat. With her spouse Ollie Kaplan, Avery co-authored the middle school textbook on intersectionality Double Challenge: Being LGBTQ and a Minority. She was honored to serve as a judge for the 2021 - 2024 Cartoonist Studio Prize Awards and the 2021 Prism Awards. She lives in the mountains of Southern California with her partner and a pile of cats, and her favorite place to visit is the cemetery. You can also find her writing on Comics Bookcase, the Gutter Review, Shelfdust, the Mary Sue, in the Comics Courier and in many issues of PanelxPanel, and in the margins of the books in her personal library.
