Francisco Navarro

The transition zone between land and sea in glaciers is an indicator of their stability. An analysis of satellite measurements from 1992 to 2025 has shown that 77% of Antarctica’s coastline has experienced no change. The 23% that did see a reduction in area was concentrated in regions where deep troughs allow access to warmer waters and where the bed slopes inland. These include the Antarctic Peninsula, Wilkes and George V Lands, and West Antarctica, where retreat of this transition line ranged between 10 and 40 km. A total of 12,800 km² of ice has been lost —an area roughly equivalent to almost half the size of Galicia— most of it in West Antarctica. The results are published in the journal PNAS.

Research published in Nature shows that the Eurasian ice sheet may have retreated up to 600 metres a day on the Norwegian continental shelf during the last deglaciation at the end of the last Ice Age, around 20,000 years ago. This would indicate that retreat rates in this region may have far exceeded previous estimates and would be much greater than any observed from satellites. According to the authors, the research "is a warning from the past about the rate at which ice sheets are physically capable of retreating".