A few links for anyone interested:
http://www.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.p...p;setcookie=yes "...Over the last few decades, and particularly within the last 10 years, several ice shelves in the northern Antarctic Peninsula have rapidly retreated. essentially disappearing. As discussed below, morphological evidence, coupled with ice-flow speeds of the shelves, indicates that they have existed for centuries prior to this period. The only plausible cause for this sudden turn of events is the strong regional climate warming observed in the area over the same period. Weather-station records from several stations in the Antarctic Peninsula indicate a 2.5 degree C warming trend in mean annual air temperature over the last 50 years..."
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/ Contains an interesting table indicating the amount of ice in the various ice sheets, and the amount of sea level rise that would occur if one melted completely.
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Key_Topics/IceSheet_SeaLevel/index.html Exerpt: "Sea level is rising at around 2 mm a year, which is at a faster rate than over the last 5000 years (less than 1 mm a year), but still slower than the average rate (5 mm a year) predicted for the next 80 years."
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=276 This one includes information that my ol' geomorph prof didn't have: "However, data from coral reefs exposed above sea level today, and other evidence, point to an LIG sea level at least 4 m and possibly as much as 6 m greater than today."
It also contains many links to the original abstracts (and sometimes full papers).
