December 21, 2016 at 05:22PM

NASA’s Operation IceBridge has been studying how polar ice has evolved over the past eight years and conducted a set of 12-hour research flights over West Antarctica at the start of the melt season. Researchers have used the IceBridge data to observe that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may be in a state of irreversible decline directly contributing to rising sea levels. NASA and University of California, Irvine (UCI) researchers have recently detected the speediest ongoing Western Antarctica glacial retreat rates ever observed. -- By Getty Images

Ice near the coast of West Antarctica from a window of a NASA Operation IceBridge airplane on Oct. 27 in flight over Antarctica. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)


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