Greenland ice loss
Greenland ice loss
For 20 years, NASA and DLR's GRACE mission and its successor GRACE-FO have been observing changes in Earth's gravitational field. With this data, scientists from Danish Arctic research institutes have found that the Greenland ice sheet has lost around 4.7 trillion tonnes of ice, contributing approximately 1.2 centimetres to global sea level rise. The ice is melting much faster than expected. Since measurements began in April 2002, the Greenland ice sheet has lost 4700 cubic kilometres of meltwater. This would put the entire area of the USA half a metre under water. The average annual loss is 277 gigatonnes. (Black, minus five metres; dark red, minus four metres; red, minus three metres; orange, minus two metres; yellow, minus one metre – loss relative to water equivalent 2002). The GRACE-C satellites will continue these measurements from 2028.
