Greenland's ice sheet lost mass for the 30th year in a row, even in a mild melt season

Greenland's ice sheet lost more ice than it gained for the 30th consecutive year, shedding an estimated 135 billion metric tons in the 12 months to August, according to scientists at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI).

The milestone matters because scientists typically need 30 years of data to separate human-caused climate change from natural swings. Greenland has not recorded a net annual gain since 1996, through warm years, cold years and snowy years alike, according to a guest post published Tuesday in Carbon Brief by DMI climate scientists Martin Stendel and Ruth Mottram.

The loss came despite a relatively cool start to summer. Frequent snowfall and cloud cover delayed the start of the melt season until June 5, nine days later than the 1981-2010 average. Greenland ended the year with a surface mass balance, the difference between snowfall and surface melt, of 519 billion metric tons, the sixth-highest in 46 years of records.

Most of the loss happened at the ice sheet's edges, where icebergs break off and glaciers melt into warm seawater. On Aug. 4, an ice island of more than 76 square kilometers (29 square miles) split from the Petermann glacier in northwest Greenland, the largest calving event by any Arctic glacier since 2020.

A new estimate based on weather stations, satellites and other observations puts the year's loss even higher, at 173 billion metric tons. The researchers note that Greenland remains the largest source of ice-driven sea level rise.

This brief is based on a guest post by Martin Stendel and Ruth Mottram, published Oct. 27, 2026, in Carbon Brief. Read the original: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-greenland-ice-sheet-shrinks-for-30th-year-in-a-row/