Earth lost a record 28 trillion tonnes of ice between 1994 and 2017

A record-breaking 28 trillion tonnes of ice melted from the face of the Earth between 1994–2017, the Daily Mail reports, citing scientific findings.

Researchers from the University of Leeds carried out the first ever global survey of ice loss using data collected from satellites orbiting our planet.

The team found that the annual rate of ice loss increased by 65 per cent over the 23-year period — going from 0.8 trillion tons in the nineties up to 1.3 trillion tons. 

The accelerating melt — which continues to get worse — has been driven largely by steep increases in losses from the polar ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.

Ice melt serves to raise sea levels across the globe, increases the risk of flooding to coastal communities and endangers natural habitats that wildlife depend upon.

"Although every region we studied lost ice, losses from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated the most," said paper author and earth scientist Thomas Slater, of the University of Leeds.

The ice sheets are now following the worst-case climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.'

"Sea-level rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century."

"Over the past three decades there's been a huge international effort to understand what's happening to individual components in Earth's ice system," he added.

This endeavour, he explained, has been "revolutionised by satellites which allow us to routinely monitor the vast and inhospitable regions where ice can be found."

"Our study is the first to combine these efforts and look at all the ice that is being lost from the entire planet."

According to Dr Slater and colleagues, the rising ice loss is due to the warming of Earth's atmosphere and oceans — which have, respectively, seen temperature increases of 0.5°F (0.26°C) and 0.2°F (0.12°C) each decade since the 1980s.

The majority — 68 per cent — of global ice loss was driven by atmospheric melting, while the remaining 32 per cent of losses have been driven by oceanic melting.

The team's survey covered 215,000 mountain glaciers spread around the planet, the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the ice shelves floating around Antarctica and sea ice drifting in the Arctic and Southern Oceans.