NASA To Reveal Fate Of West Antarctic Ice Sheet Today

NASA will hold a press conference on Monday, May 12, at 12:30 p.m. EDT to discuss new findings on the West Antarctic ice sheet and its potential affect on sea level rise in the future.

Audio of the conference can be streamed live at NASA's website. The teleconference will also be streamed live with visuals on Ustream.

Live streaming video by Ustream

To coincide with the NASA announcement, the American Association for the Advancement of Science announced that they will release a related paper discussing the instability of the West Antarctic ice sheet on Monday. The study will be published in the journal Science.

The West and East Antarctic ice sheets are separated by the Transantarctic Mountains. The West Antarctic ice sheet, the smaller section in the western hemisphere, is particularly vulnerable to melting from warm ocean waters because it sits on top of bedrock below sea level, NASA said.

Participants for the conference include Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Sridhar Anandakrishnan, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, and Tom Wagner, a scientist with NASA's Earth Science Division.