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Greenland ice sheet
The Greenland Ice Sheet is a vast body of ice covering roughly 80% of the surface of Greenland. It is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ice sheet is almost 2,400 kilometres long in a north-south direction, and its greatest width is 1,100 kilometres at a latitude of 77° N, near its northern margin. The ice sheet, consisting of layers of compressed snow from more than a hundred thousand years, contains in its ice today's most valuable record of past climates. In the past decades, scientists have drilled ice cores up to three kilometres deep. With the ice cores, scientist have obtained information on (proxies for) temperature, ocean volume, precipitation, chemistry and gas composition of the lower atmosphere, volcanic eruptions, solar variability, sea-surface productivity, desert extent and forest fires. This variety of climatic proxies is greater than in any other natural recorder of climate, such as tree rings or sediment layers. The Greenland Ice Sheet has experienced record melting in recent years and is likely to contribute substantially to sea level rise as well as to possible changes in ocean circulation in the future.
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Earth & Climate News
September 16, 2026
Sep. 16, 2026 Scientists have developed a solar-powered desalination system that turns seawater into fresh water while removing nearly all of the leftover salt as a solid instead of producing harmful brine. The self-cleaning technology could also recover valuable ...
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Sep. 15, 2026 The Hunga Tonga eruption may have triggered a surprising chemical reaction that destroyed some of the methane released into the atmosphere. Scientists say the discovery could reshape estimates of methane pollution and inspire new methods for slowing ...
Sep. 14, 2026 More than 60 years after surveys suggested a deep coral reef off Benin was probably dead, scientists have found it alive. Cameras revealed healthy-looking coral patches supporting multiple fish species more than 50 meters beneath the surface. The ...
Sep. 14, 2026 A World War I submarine wreck off Denmark is leaking TNT into the surrounding water, seabed, and marine life more than a century after it sank. Scientists warn that thousands of similar wrecks could pose growing environmental risks as they continue ...
Sep. 13, 2026 Mount Etna’s ancient eruptions followed radically different paths, with some magma lingering near the surface for weeks while other magma raced upward from nearly 30 kilometers deep in just hours. Scientists traced the difference to volcanic gases ...
Sep. 13, 2026 Scientists have found that Arctic cyclones become especially destructive when several strike one after another. These storm clusters cause about twice as much sea ice loss as isolated cyclones, with impacts that persist roughly two and a half times ...
Sep. 13, 2026 The Indian and Pacific oceans have been climatically linked for centuries, but scientists say that connection is now breaking down in an exceptional way. Ancient climate records suggest volcanoes disrupted the relationship in the past, while today ...
Sep. 12, 2026 Ancient rocks from Western Australia suggest water was reaching deep inside Earth more than three billion years ago, long before modern plate tectonics may have fully developed. Researchers propose that water-rich pieces of crust periodically sank ...
Sep. 11, 2026 Britain’s wasps have become mysteriously scarce this summer, and scientists suspect an unusual combination of temperature swings, heatwaves, and food shortages may be responsible. Even the wasps that remain appear unusually small, potentially ...
Sep. 10, 2026 The Mediterranean may seem far removed from the world’s major tsunami zones, but history and modern modeling show that destructive waves can strike the French Riviera with surprisingly little warning. Some tsunamis could reach shore in under 10 ...
Sep. 6, 2026 East Antarctica gained an astonishing 695 billion tons of ice between 2021 and 2023, temporarily slowing Antarctica’s long-term decline. Researchers found that warming thousands of miles away in ...
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Sep. 4, 2026 A giant iceberg measuring more than 76 square kilometers broke from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier in August 2026, marking the Arctic’s largest glacier calving event since 2020. The berg later ...
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Sep. 3, 2026 Deep beneath Mars, scientists have found evidence of enormous magmatic systems once thought to require Earth-like plate tectonics. Seismic measurements suggest molten rock repeatedly evolved and ...
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