Are the land-based ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica continuing to lose mass (ice)?
Satellite observations show that the polar ice sheets shed a combined 420 billion metric tons of ice per year between 2002 and 2023, contributing the most to global sea level rise. The leading cause of this melt is the human burning of fossil fuels.
These images show those changes, with oranges and reds indicating ice losses, while light blues illustrate ice gains. Gray areas show ice flow lines as they lead to prominent valley glaciers, which are areas with the most declines. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Data from NASA's GRACE satellites, which measured Earth’s gravity field, show that the land ice sheets in both Antarctica (first chart here) and Greenland (second chart here) have been losing mass (ice) since 2002.
Land-based ice losses, like those in Greenland and Antarctica, make up the largest component of observed sea-level rise—even bigger than thermal expansion of the ocean due to global warming.
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