As predicted by Mercer and other glaciologists, the loss of the shelves led to an increased flow of ice into the sea. The rate of flow increased from fourfold to eightfold. That amount of flow is not a huge problem for sea-level rise because the peninsula is a thin strip of land with no major ice sheets inside. That’s the good news: the Larsen ice shelves do not hold back much ice. The bad news is that there are other ice shelves that hold back enough ice to raise global sea levels by over 16 feet in a single century.
