How Much Water is in the Greenland Ice Sheet?
Greenland is about one-fourth the size of the United States and the massive ice sheet covers about 80 percent of its surface. It holds about 20 percent of the world’s ice, the equivalent of about 21 feet of global sea rise. Air temperatures over the Greenland ice sheet have increased by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1991, which most scientists attribute to a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. A 2006 study by Wahr and Velicogna using the GRACE satellite indicated that Greenland lost roughly 164 cubic miles of ice from April 2004 to April 2006 — more than the volume of water in Lake Erie. The animated movie of the spread of ice loss into northwest Greenland observed by GRACE from 2003 through 2009 shows a shift in the color spectrum beginning with turquoise and ending in black over the seven-year time span. The movie was created by CU-Boulder’s Wahr.
