Earth’s last great icy citadel, the East Antarctica Ice Sheet, is beginning to crumble.

Antarctica’s western ice sheet has been under siege from global warming for some time, with billions of tons of ice melting into the ocean each year and contributing to sea level rise. By contrast, the east has appeared to hold out, its mass staying stable.

Now a new set of satellite measurements indicate the East may have begun to succumb to warmer temperatures, losing as much as 57 billion tons of ice a year since 2006. There is still a lot of uncertainty in the readings, but if the readings hold up under scrutiny, it would mark an important change in the world’s largest ice sheet.

“This could be the beginning of a trend, but whether or not it’s a trend or just variability from year to year, we’re not sure,” Jianli Chen of the University of Texas at Austin said. Chen led a team of researchers on the study, which appeared yesterday in Nature Geoscience.

The team’s results in western Antarctica match up well with previous studies, which have found that the region is shedding around 196 billion tons of ice each year.

That’s a tiny fraction of the total amount of ice on the continent, which holds enough frozen water to raise sea level a staggering 70 meters (230 feet) if it were to melt. Still, it’s enough to cause concern — much of the western ice sheet lies below sea level, and though air temperatures have remained well below freezing, warmer ocean waters have been eating away at its edges.

The eastern glaciers have comparatively little direct contact with ocean waters, which may explain why they have remained stable in recent years, even growing by some measurements.

But Chen and his team’s work, a profile of changes in ice quantity from 2002 through early 2009, suggests the Eastern glaciers began shedding ice in the Wilkes Land area of East Antarctica in 2006. Ice loss also appears to have accelerated in much of Western Antarctica, perhaps indicating a warming trend since then. The team based their studies on data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite.

Not all scientists are convinced, however. Jay Zwally of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center noted that the team’s findings also show a thickening of ice in another part of eastern Antarctica, which he thinks is evidence that snowfall has merely shifted away from Wilkes Land in recent years.

“You can have a change in precipitation of tens of centimeter during the time period they’re looking at,” he said. “I don’t think what they’re seeing is related to changes in ice dynamics. Melt isn’t driving this.”

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Manu Sharma, convicted of Jessica Lall’s murder has voluntarily surrendered to Tihar jail authorities on Tuesday (November 10) following intense public and media scrutiny on his activities since he was granted parole by the Delhi government..

The DG, Tihar Jail confirmed today that Sharma had indeed surrendered in Jail No 2 of Tihar at about 11:30 am. “I have been told that half an hour back that Manu Sharma voluntarily surrendered prior to the expiry of his parole. He surrendered at Jail No 2 where he was lodged.” Sharma who had received an extension of parole, is back in solitary confinement.

Manu Sharma appears to have misused his parole since he was seen at a night club recently while he had stated the reason for parole as being to attend to his business and to take care of his sick mother. Not only was his mother later found to be in good health, but Sharma while partying at a nightclub also picked up a fight.

Senior counselor Majid Memon said: “He (Manu Sharma) has been advised by his lawyers to surrender, in a decision probably to silence those making a big hue and cry. If a person has taken some facility for attending his relative’s illness – he is not expected to be sitting with him for all 30 days – there is no prohibition on his going to a restaurant. However he is certainly not expected to behave in a disorderly manner and for that he is liable and his parole could be cancelled. He however may use his surrender to his own advantage showing the Supreme Court that he chose to waive his parole which is a good thing.”

Delhi police now say that they were never consulted before parole was granted to Sharma – and that they would never have allowed it since he is a public nuisance and has a history of disorderly conduct while released on bail. He was released on bail in 2002 and subsequently got into a brawl in his own bar in Chandigarh. There has been speculation whether there was political might working behind him to allow him parole.

The issue generated a lot of negative reactions among the public and intense mass media scrutiny. A private news channel even spoke to actor Arjun Rampal who confirmed that Sharma had been seen at a bar owned by him. Police also confirmed that Sharma got into a tiff with a senior police officer’s son in another bar – ‘F Bar’ in the capital on the same night.

Delhi police has now reportedly obtained CCTV footage of Sharma in the bar which could go against him in future if he tries to apply for bail again. The Apex court has already rejected one bail application in May last year.

Reacting to Sharma’s surrender, Jessica’s sister Sabrina Lall said public scrutiny had led to the move, adding if the reports had not been carried by the media Sharma’s parole would probably have been further extended. She said there had to be stringent rules governing granting of parole. She said Sharma seemed to have used his money and muscle power to get special treatment.

“I hope there have been some lessons learnt from this. For people like him there should be a lot more investigations done before granting parole. It is disappointing that time and again history repeats itself and we have to constantly fight to keep him behind bars. It seems like this will happen again as the boy will try every trick in the book to get out whenever he can.”

“The Media and public has had its say and I am happy. Criminal justice laws need to be change and this is a slow process that may get us to that,” said Bina Ramani, owner of Tamarind Bar where Jessica Lall was shot in cold blood by Sharma.