Observations made by scientists in U.S. and Australia confirmed that the largest ice sheet in East Antarctica which is called Totten glacier is melting drastically. The said melting is caused by the flowing of warm water of the ocean towards the glacier at a rate of 220,000 cubic meters a second. Thus the ice shelf lost a large mass every year. The Totten glacier which is larger than the size of California will cause the sea level to rise up to 11.5 feet if it gets dissolved in the ocean.

According to Arstechnica, (data collected from 2002 to 2014), in this 12 year observation scientists using satellite data global sea level rose by 2.74 + 0.58 mm/y. In the Philippines alone some barangays were wiped out because of this. How much more if the Totten glacier will be totally dissolved?

Although this data was published but it is also said that sea level rising is not uniformed to all coasts in the world. Many factors are concerned with the different sea level rising in different areas.

Stephen Rintoul, the lead author of the study published in Sciences Advances said Totten glacier is relatively close to Casey Station, one of Australia's bases in Antarctica, as Mashable reported.

Don Blankenship, one of the study's co-authors, a glaciologist at University of Texas said the ice shelf is thinning because of the ocean's warm water, the same is happening in West Antarctica.

The method used by Rintoul and co-researchers in making necessary observations and detect warm water is going close to the Totten ice shelf and use an opening in the ice sea. They said that though the water that reached the Totten ice shelf may not be considered warm because they are below the freezing point a little bit, but due to extreme depth and pressure, the freezing point also goes down, and water became warm enough to dissolve the ice.

Scientists claimed this is caused by global warming, the United Nations have made initiatives to further strengthen the fight against climate change.

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