Arctic and Greenland According to recent satellite data, ice sheets are melting quickly and contributing to sea level rise.

The Earth’s ice sheets have lost enough ice over the last 30 years to create an ice cube 12 miles high, according to new research. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which hold almost all of the world’s freshwater ice, are shrinking at a frighteningly rapid pace, according to a report from a team of international scientists. The seven worst years for polar ice sheet melting all happened during the past decade, with the worst year being 2019, when the ice sheets lost around 675 billion tons of ice. The loss of ice is having a significant impact on the oceans, pushing up sea levels by 21 millimeters (just less than an inch). The rate at which the Antarctic ice sheet is melting has slowed, but remains much faster than in the 1990s. The report identified the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica as the regions where most of the continent’s melt is happening, and it is not yet clear what might happen to the Antarctic ice sheet.