Articles | Volume 15, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-233-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-233-2021
Review article
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25 Jan 2021
Review article | Highlight paper |  | 25 Jan 2021

Review article: Earth's ice imbalance

Thomas Slater, Isobel R. Lawrence, Inès N. Otosaka, Andrew Shepherd, Noel Gourmelen, Livia Jakob, Paul Tepes, Lin Gilbert, and Peter Nienow

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AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision
ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (18 Nov 2020) by Xavier Fettweis
AR by Thomas Slater on behalf of the Authors (18 Nov 2020)  Author's response    Manuscript
ED: Publish as is (18 Nov 2020) by Xavier Fettweis
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Short summary
Satellite observations are the best method for tracking ice loss, because the cryosphere is vast and remote. Using these, and some numerical models, we show that Earth has lost 28 trillion tonnes (Tt) of ice since 1994 from Arctic sea ice (7.6 Tt), ice shelves (6.5 Tt), mountain glaciers (6.1 Tt), the Greenland (3.8 Tt) and Antarctic ice sheets (2.5 Tt), and Antarctic sea ice (0.9 Tt). It has taken just 3.2 % of the excess energy Earth has absorbed due to climate warming to cause this ice loss.