Antarctic Melting Fastest in 1K Years

The Antarctic Peninsula is melting at a rate not seen for a millennium, researchers find. They investigated a 1,200-foot ice core from the peninsula, analyzing sections that had melted and refrozen, al Jazeera reports. The thickness of those layers and the gases held within revealed the extent of the melting. During the summer, 10 times as much ice melts today as it did 600 years ago, the experts say. Some 9,700 square miles of ice from 10 ice shelves have melted, and the region's temperature has increased by some five degrees, five times the world average, in the last 50 years. (More Antarctica stories.)