Greenland's glaciers could be shrinking more in response to climate warming than scientists had thought.

Credit: Asahi Shimbun/Getty

Shfaqat Khan of the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby and his colleagues used data from a network of Global Positioning System stations across Greenland (pictured) to measure the rise of land resulting from ice loss and estimated changes since the last ice age. The uplift observed — more than 12 millimetres per year in some regions — exceeded model-derived rates by several millimetres on average. Previous satellite measurements have not accurately accounted for the response of solid Earth to ice-load changes, and thus underestimate current ice-mass loss by some 17 billion tonnes per year, the authors conclude.

The new data suggest that ice loss from Greenland has caused 4.6 metres of sea-level rise — 44% more than some previous estimates — since the last ice age.

Sci. Adv. 2, 1600931 (2016) Footnote 1