A huge swath of the waters off Antarctica must be protected from fishing and other industries, environmental groups said on Monday.

More than 40% of the region needs to be given protection before one of the world's last true frontier areas is damaged irreparably by human activity, the Antarctic Ocean Alliance (AOA) said.

Massive extraction of groundwater can resolve a puzzle over a rise in sea levels in past decades, scientists in Japan said on Sunday.

Global sea levels rose by an average of 1.8 millimetres per year from 1961-2003, according to data from tide gauges.

But the big question is how much of this can be pinned to global warming.

Scientists are predicting the disappearance of another vast ice shelf in Antarctica by the end of the century that will accelerate rising sea levels.

The Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf fringing the Weddell Sea on the eastern side of Antarctica has so far not seen ice loss from global warming and much of the observation of melting has focused on the western side of the continent around the Amundsen Sea. But new research from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany says the 450,000-sq-km ice shelf is under threat.

Says little data available on impact of global warming on these
Dharamsala: The Indian Government should create a cadre of glaciologists to study the impact of global warming on Himalayan glaciers. At present little data is available regarding the impact of global warming on the Himalayan glaciers.

Sridhar Ananda Krishnan, Professor of environment science at Pennsylvania State University in the USA, stated this while talking to The Tribune. He was here to deliver a lecture on environment science to students of the Central University of Himachal Pradesh at Dharamsala.