Quartz: “New data analysis confirms what scientists have suspected for a while now: West Antarctic ice melt is speeding up. In a cutting-edge survey of satellite data published Feb. 13 in the journal Cryosphere, researchers from NASA and other institutions shows that ice loss from the critical region of Antarctica is happening at an increasingly fast pace. In total, researchers found that Antarctica lost roughly 1,929 gigatons of ice in 2015, which amounts to an increase of roughly 36 gigatons per year every year since 2008. (A gigaton is one billion tons.) Nearly 90% of that increase in loss occurred in West Antarctica, “probably in response to ocean warming,” according to NASA. The new data analysis mostly confirms other recent research, but does so with a higher degree of precision by using a new technique that can process a larger amount of satellite data than was possible before…”