Snowfall-driven growth in East Antarctic ice sheet mitigates recent sea-level rise

Satellite radar altimetry measurements indicate that the East Antarctic ice-sheet interior north of 81.6% increased in mass by 45 ± 7 billion metric tons per year from 1992 to 2003. Comparisons with contemporaneous meteorological model snowfall estimates suggest that the gain in mass was associated with increased precipitation. A gain of this magnitude is enough to slow sea-level rise by 0.12 ± 0.02 millimeters per year.
Recent studies report substantial contributions from the Greenland (1, 2) and Antarctic (3, 4) ice sheets to present-day sea-level rise of ~1.8 mm/year (5). Rapid increases in near-coastal Greenland ice-sheet [...]