Nature World News reports:
Antarctica’s western ice sheet has existed 20 million years longer than previous believed, according to a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters which indicates that the ice sheet layering West Antarctica came into formation at the start of a global transition from warm greenhouse conditions to a cooler icehouse climate about 34 million years ago.
Today, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet contains about 10 percent of the total ice on Antarctica and is similar in scale to the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Previous studies, which used computer simulations to produce models of the ancient Antarctic, were unable to account for the significant amounts of ice that geological records suggest was present at the time.
Oh, Joy! 20 million more years to tweak….need more grant money!