Greenland's three largest glaciers lost an enormous amount of ice during the past decade, but each has quite different prospects for long-term stability. Ian Howat at Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues combined remote-sensing data with meteorological modelling to estimate the amounts of ice gained or lost from the glaciers each month from 2000 to 2010.

Despite a drastic retreat between 2004 and 2006, Helheim glacier managed to gain a small amount of mass by the end of the period. The Jakobshavn glacier, however, is shedding ice ever faster. Meanwhile, at Kangerdlugssuaq, mass loss sped up but has since returned to the 2000 rate. These differences, the researchers say, show that simply extrapolating from recent changes is not a reliable way of predicting future ice loss.

Geophys. Res. Lett. doi:10.1029/2011GL047565 (2011)