A new study from an international team of polar scientists shows that Greenland and Antarctica have lost 11.3 trillion tonnes of ice since the 1970s. The melting has raised global sea levels by more than 3 centimeters or a little over an inch. This doesn't sound like much but it is. It would be enough to cover the continental United States in 5 feet of ice or it would enough ice to create a cube that would be 23 kilometers (14.3 miles) in height.
Inès Otosaka, the professor from England’s Northumbria University who led the study, decribes the impact as “every additional center of sea-level rise puts about 2 to 3 million people … at risk of annual coastal flooding.” The satellite observations show that melting has not been constant but has accelerated over time.
The scientists explain that Greenland “lost about 60 billion metric tons annually in the 1980s and 57 billion in the 1990s, losses then accelerated, reaching a rate three times higher in the 2000s, at 192 billion metric tons, and climbing to 264 billion in the 2010s. Overall, Greenland lost 6,215 trillion metric tons of ice from 1972 to 2023.”
As well as being a revelation of how much we’ve lost, the findings will have implications for coastal planning as even small increases in sea level can have devastating consequences when combined with high tides and extreme weather.