Climate change

Study: Ice Sheets Lost 11.3 Trillion Tons Since 1979

Is this a rounding error in a natural cycle or a warning coastal cities can't ignore?

1 day ago·Updated 14 hours ago

Study: Ice Sheets Lost 11.3 Trillion Tons Since 1979

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Above: Iceberg formation floating at Horseshoe Island, Antarctica, on Feb. 14, 2025. Image credit: ebnem Cokun/Anadolu/Getty Images)

The Facts

A study published Wednesday in the journal Scientific Data found that Greenland and Antarctica lost about 11.3 trillion metric tons of ice between 1979 and 2023, raising global sea levels by roughly 31.4 millimeters.
Nature
CSIRO Publishing
PBS News
Researchers reported that 84% of the combined ice loss came from accelerating glacier discharge into the ocean, while about 16% resulted from surface melting. The two ice sheets now account for roughly a quarter of global sea level rise.
European Space Agency
Africanews
PHYS
The Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise team combined 42 independent satellite surveys drawn from 27 satellite missions, extending the record back to 1972 for Greenland and 1979 for Antarctica using the early Landsat archive.
AGU Publications
The Times of India
Greenland's annual ice loss rose from about 60 billion metric tons in the 1980s to 264 billion in the 2010s, while Antarctica's rate climbed from roughly 48 billion metric tons a year to 202 billion over the same period.
AGU Publications
EurekAlert!
Ice loss temporarily slowed between 2020 and 2023, as record snowfall over East Antarctica offset losses elsewhere and milder Greenland summers roughly halved surface melting. Scientists said these are short-term fluctuations, not a reversal.
CSIRO Publishing
The Times of India
BigGo Finance
Andrew Shepherd of Northumbria University said that just over 3 centimeters of sea-level rise puts "another six to nine million people at risk of coastal flooding and erosion." The European Space Agency and NASA support the assessment.
European Space Agency
EurekAlert!
Northumbria University

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The Spin

Climate-skeptic narrative

Trillions of tons sounds scary until you see the context: that loss is about 0.04% of the ice in Greenland and Antarctica, spread over 44 years. Earth has always cycled through icehouse and warm phases, with oceans rising 120 meters after the last glacial period without any human hand. The oceans hold roughly 90% of retained heat and buffer the planet, so panic is not physics.

Peter Clack on X

Dr. Matthew M. Wielicki on X

Climate-concerned narrative

Antarctic sea ice fell off a cliff in 2015-16 and never recovered, and warm Circumpolar Deep Water is now creeping under the shelves and melting them from below. Hektoria Glacier retreated about 25 kilometers in roughly a year, thinning 80 meters annually — an order of magnitude faster than anything in the modern record. Percentages mean nothing to coastal cities going underwater.

Climate Uncensored

AGU Publications