evidence: Melting of polar ice shifting Earth itself, not just sea levels [...] The melting of polar ice is not only shifting the levels of our oceans, it is changing the planet Earth itself. Newly minted Ph.D. Sophie Coulson and her colleagues explained in a recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters that, as glacial ice from Greenland, Antarctica, and the Arctic Islands melts, Earth’s crust beneath these land masses warps, an impact that can be measured hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles away. [...] The current melting is only the most recent movement researchers are observing. "The Arctic is an interesting region because, as well as the modern-day ice sheets, we also have a lasting signal from the last ice age," Coulson explained. An ice sheet once covered what is now Northern Europe and Scandinavia during the Pleistocene Epoch, the ice age that started about 2.6 million years ago and lasted until roughly 11,000 years ago. "The Earth is actually still rebounding from that ice melting."