Been going on for thousands of years. But since we've been really watching, this one is a big one. It'll really add to our understanding of the process at a large scale. Where does it go? How does the shelve behind it respond to the rapidly changing stress regime?

It will not really make a difference sea-level rise-wise. But here's the thing...add a bunch of saline-free water to the ocean, and it sits on top of the denser saline rich water, and since it has a higher freezing point, it turns into sea ice. So, at least in the Antarctic, which is somewhat atmospherically isolated from the rest of the southern hemisphere, we might expect sea ice in the Antarctic to actually increase as the ice cap gently melts.