Image copyright BAS Image caption Parts of West Antarctica are undergoing significant change 
 
 Melting ice is fuelling sea-level rise around the coast of Antarctica, a new report in Nature Geoscience finds. 
 
 Near-shore waters went up by about 2mm per year more than the general trend for the Southern Ocean as a whole in the period between 1992 and 2011. 
 
 Scientists say the melting of glaciers and the thinning of ice shelves are dumping 350 billion tonnes of additional water into the sea annually. 
 
 This influx is warming and freshening the ocean, pushing up its surface. 
 
 "Freshwater is less dense than salt water and so in regions where an excess of freshwater has accumulated we expect a localised rise in sea level," explained Dr Craig Rye from the University of Southampton, UK, and lead author on the new journal paper. 
 
 Globally, sea levels are going up, in part because of the contribution of the world's diminishing ice fields. This is well known. 
 
 But the Nature Geoscience report is the first to show the direct consequences to sea surface height (SSH) around Antarctica itself. 
 
 While the satellite data record indicates there has been a general upward trend in SSH in the Southern Ocean south of 50 degrees of up to 2.4mm per year, those satellites also indicate a more rapid rise in waters sitting on the continental shelf. 
 
 Mass losses 
 
 Modelling by Dr Rye's team suggests that this additional 2mm per year can be attributed almost exclusively to freshwater runoff from Antarctica, and not to some climatic oscillation that might make sea levels "breathe" up and down on decadal timescales. 
 
 "We can estimate the amount of water that wind is pushing on to the continental shelf, and show with some certainty that it is very unlikely that this wind forcing is causing the sea level rise," Dr Rye told BBC News. 
 
 "And because we can model the freshwater forcing, and the fact that this is so much more like what we see in the real world, we can come to the confident conclusion that the signal is driven by freshwater forcing." 
 
 Recent satellite studies have underlined the increased mass losses occurring in Antarctica. 
 
 Much of this accelerated ice discharge is occurring in the continent's western sectors, particularly in the Amundsen Sea Embayment and along the Antarctic Peninsula. 
 
 In contrast to land ice, the sea ice around Antarctica stands at record levels and is becoming more extensive. 
 
 The growth is small and very regional in character, but nonetheless significant. 
 
 Quite how the freshening of surface waters might be influencing this phenomenon is now a target for study. 
 
 "That's a really interesting question which I'd like to look into with further research," Dr Rye said. 
 
 Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos ||||| The calving front of Thwaites Ice Shelf photographed from the IceBridge research plane. The water acts as a blue filter for ice visible below the water's surface. Thwaites Glacier flows into Pine Island Bay, in West Antarctica. 
 
 The seas are rising. But just how dire is the situation? 
 
 That's the question that a huge team of international scientists is hoping to answer as it prepares to launch a major study of one of the main culprits of sea level rise: the Thwaites glacier. 
 
 More than 100 scientists from the U.S., United Kingdom, and other countries will begin a $27.5 million study of the glacier, which is located in West Antarctica, according to a report in The Guardian. Thwaites, as Live Science has previously reported, is one of a small cluster of glaciers that act like corks, holding back the enormous ice masses of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. And, like its cousins, Thwaites' melting has accelerated rapidly in recent years. 
 
 According to The Guardian, ice from Thwaites streaming into the ocean accounted for about 4 percent of total global sea level rise in recent years — twice its contribution from the mid-1990s. That's a significant amount of water coming off of one glacier. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that, globally, sea level has risen about 2.6 inches (6.6 centimeters) above the 1993 average, and it continues to rise by about one-eighth of an inch (3.2 millimeters) per year. Studying Thwaites, the scientists hope, could help them figure out how much worse the situation is going to get. 
 
 Glaciers like Thwaites matter a great deal to sea level for a simple reason: They're large masses of landlocked ice that hold back even larger masses of ice, keeping them from sliding into the sea. 
 
 Landlocked ice changes sea level because when it melts, it introduces new water to the ocean, and this water isn't likely to leave the ocean anytime soon. Sea ice, on the other hand, like the ice cap in the Arctic, can have major effects on climate when it melts. But it's fundamentally water that's already in the ocean. Whether it's liquid or solid doesn't directly affect sea level around the world. 
 
 But Thwaites and its ilk are the main feeders of water mass driving sea level rise. And as scientists have studied these ice masses, they've only discovered more signs of how bad the situation is — and how bad it could get. Back in 2013, for example, scientists found "swamp-like waterways" under Thwaites that strip away its ice mass and lubricate it against the ground, accelerating its rush toward the sea. 
 
 The new project aims to understand the situation at Thwaites in greater detail than ever before and offer a deeper peek into our collective climate future. 
 
 Editor's Note: This article was updated to correct a metric conversion. One-eighth of an inch is 3.2 mm, not 32 mm as was stated. 
 
 Originally published on Live Science.
– Around 61% of the world's freshwater is locked up in Antarctic ice—but a new study warns that accelerating melting on the continent is helping push up the sea levels around it. Researchers found that between 1992 and 2011, sea levels rose more around Antarctica than in the Southern Ocean as a whole. "Freshwater is less dense than salt water, and so in regions where an excess of freshwater has accumulated we expect a localized rise in sea level," the author of a study published in Nature explains to the BBC. The researchers say their models suggest freshwater runoff, not natural fluctuations, is the only explanation for the 2mm-per-year rise. "We can estimate the amount of water that wind is pushing onto the continental shelf, and show with some certainty that it is very unlikely that this wind forcing is causing the sea level rise," the lead researcher says. The researchers say the freshening of the water may explain growth in sea ice in the area, though that growth comes as new satellite-produced maps show that ice sheets on land are melting at an unprecedented rate, the Guardian notes. (Last month, researchers revealed that they had found life half a mile below the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.)