... GRACE team, DLR , NASA Explanation: Is the continent at the end of the Earth slowly melting? For millions of years, Antarctica , the frozen continent at the southern end of planet Earth, has been encased in a gigantic sheet of ice. ... Recent analysis of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data indicate that the Antarctic ice sheet might have lost enough mass to cause the worlds' oceans to rise about 1.2 millimeters, on the average, from between 2002 and 2005. ...