Greenland’s Ice Sheet retreat sends grim message, researchers say

STOCKHOLM, September 1. /TASS/. Greenland’s vast ice sheet, which covers about 80% of its territory, is shrinking for the 30th consecutive year, according to the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS).

Researchers describe these three decades of negative total mass balance as a "climate signal." The total mass balance last increased in the 1995/96 melting season, and it has been negative every year ever since.

According to the latest calculations from GEUS, during the 2025/26 melting season, the Greenland Ice Sheet lost approximately 173 billion tons of ice, and in 2024/25 the mass loss amounted to 130 billion tons. However, an even larger loss of 458 billion tons was recorded in 2012.

"A single year can be heavily influenced by the weather and therefore does not tell us much about long-term climate trends. That is why we researchers typically look at a 30-year period when we need to say something about the climate. The Greenland Ice Sheet has now experienced 30 consecutive years of overall shrinkage, and this strongly underlines the grim message: global warming is accelerating the melt and causing the Greenland Ice Sheet to shrink over time," Signe Hillerup Larsen, a researcher in the Department of Glaciology and Climate at GEUS, explained.