Ice Sheet Loss in Greenland and Antarctica
How big is just one gigatonne?
Satellite data show that Greenland and Antarctica are losing mass at a rate of 283 gigatonnes per year and 145 gigatonnes per year, respectively.
So how big is just one gigatonne?
Central Park, New York
National Mall, Washington
This unit of mass is equivalent to one billion metric tons, 2.2 trillion pounds, or 10,000 fully-loaded U.S. aircraft carriers.
Central Park is 4 kilometers long and 0.8 kilometers wide. A gigatonne of ice placed here would extend 341 meters (1,119 feet) high.
How much is 5,000 gigatonnes of ice?
This is the amount of ice lost from the polar ice caps that NASA’s original GRACE mission observed from 2002 to 2017.
Texas
During the 15-year lifetime of the original GRACE mission (2002-2017), 5,641 gigatonnes of ice of were lost in Greenland and Antarctica. Ninety-nine percent of the world’s freshwater ice is located in these ice sheets.
This is enough to cover Texas in a sheet of ice 26 feet high.
How much is 49,000 gigatonnes of ice?
This is our best estimate of how much Greenland and Antarctic ice has melted into the ocean since the start of the 20th century.
Earth
Moon
Global sea level has risen by about 8 inches since 1901. This rise is due to a combination of melting ice and water expanding due to increased temperatures.
While we don’t have precise measurements, scientific models indicate that melting ice has caused about two-thirds of sea level rise to date.
We estimate that 49,000 gigatonnes of ice have melted over that time frame—enough ice to cover the entire contiguous U.S. in an ice sheet 22 feet high (about 7 meters), or coat the entire Moon's surface in a 5-foot-high ice sheet.
Links
- Visualizing The Quantities Of Climate Change: Show Me The Math
- NASA Flights Detect Millions of Arctic Methane Hotspots
- GRACE, GRACE-FO Satellite Data Track Ice Loss at the Poles
- Greenland, Antarctica Melting Six Times Faster Than in the 1990s
- Climate Change Could Trigger More Landslides in High Mountain Asia
- NASA Satellite Offers Urban Carbon Dioxide Insights
- Arctic Ice Melt Is Changing Ocean Currents
- NASA, NOAA Analyses Reveal 2019 Second Warmest Year on Record
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