Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news that impacts science and scientists today.
Researchers have calculated that Greenland and Antarctica have lost 11 trillion metric tons of ice since the 1970s, which has led to a global rise in sea level of more than 3 centimeters.
“Just over three centimetres of sea-level rise may sound small, but that puts another six to nine million people at risk of coastal flooding and erosion,” said Andrew Shepherd, head of the School of Geography and Natural Sciences at Northumbria University and founder of the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (IMBIE), in a press release.
IMBIE was founded to bring together data from various satellite missions in order to build a clearer picture of how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have changed over the last few decades. Prior to today’s report, published today in Scientific Data, IMBIE’s most recent assessment calculated a rise of about 21 millimeters to global mean sea level between 1992 and 2020.
In the new assessment, researchers drew on data from 27 satellite missions spanning more than 50 years. The vast majority—about 84%—of the calculated ice loss came from glaciers and ice sheets discharging directly into the ocean, with only 16% of the loss caused by melting at the surface.
This “tells us the long-term trend is being driven by the dynamic response of the ice sheets to a warming ocean,” said Inès Otosaka lead researcher and professor of geography and natural sciences Northumbria University, in a press release.
Though global ice loss slowed between 2020 and 2023, overall ice loss has risen steeply since the 1980s: In Greenland, annual ice loss went from 60 billion metric tons in the 1980s to 264 billion metric tons in the 2010s. In Antarctica, annual loss went from about 48 billion metric tons in the 1980s to 202 billion metric tons in the 2010s.
Through most of the twentieth century, sea level rose by about 1.4 millimeters per year. Between 2006 and 2015, the rate was more than twice as high, at 3.6 millimeters per year.
—Emily Gardner (@emfurd.bsky.social), Deputy Editor
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