"The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are now losing more than three times as much ice a year as they were 30 years ago, according to a new comprehensive international study.

Using 50 different satellite estimates, researchers found that Greenland’s melt has gone into hyperdrive in the last few years. Greenland’s average annual melt from 2017 to 2020 was 20% more a year than at the beginning of the decade and more than seven times higher than its annual shrinkage in the early 1990s.

The new figures “are pretty disastrous really,” said study co-author Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute. “We’re losing more and more ice from Greenland.”

Study lead author Ines Otosaka, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, said speeded-up ice sheet loss is clearly caused by human-caused climate change."

Seth Borenstein reports for the Associated Press April 20, 2023. [2]