Melting at the Mountains of Madness

Our borings, of varying depth according to the promise held out by the upper soil or rock, were to be confined to exposed, or nearly exposed, land surfaces - these inevitably being slopes and ridges because of the mile or two-mile thickness of solid ice overlying the lower levels. - HPL, At The Mountains of Madness
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Massive glacier in sub-Antarctic island shrinks by a fifth

PARIS (AFP) – One of the biggest glaciers in the southern hemisphere shrivelled by a fifth in 40 years, French scientists said on Wednesday (22 July 2009).

The Cook glacier on Kerguelen, an island in France's southern Indian Ocean territories, covered 501 square kilometres (193 square miles) in 1963.

Combining satellite images with other data, glaciologists from the Laboratory for Studying Geophysics and Space Oceanography estimate the glacier lost an average of nearly 1.5 metres (4.9 feet) in height each year by 2003, shedding almost 22 percent of its original volume.

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