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Ice Sheets Today

Data images and analyses of polar ice sheet melt conditions
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Ice Sheets Today: Featured Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt Images

 

melt days for Antarctic Ice Sheet
The left map shows the total melt days for the Antarctic Ice Sheet as of November 17, 2024. The map in the middle is a close up of the Antarctic Peninsula. The graph on the right show the daily melt extent for the 2024 to 2025 melt season through November 17, 2024 as percentage. The 1990 to 2020 average is depicted by a blue dashed line. The gray area around this average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. — Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

About these images: These images of the Antarctic Ice Sheet are static and do not update daily, but rather near the timeline of melt analyses posts. Learn more about how to interpret the data and any known issues.

 

Featured Ice Sheet Analysis

Analysis - Ice Sheets Today
November 19, 2024
If you were in Greenland last summer, that’s cool
The 2024 melt season for the Greenland Ice Sheet ended with the second-lowest cumulative daily melt extent in this century, ranking twenty-eighth in the satellite record, which began in 1979. A late summer heat wave along the northwestern ice sheet closed out the season.
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About Ice Sheets Today

meltwater cuts into Greenland ice sheet, exposing dirt
Water carves into the Greenland Ice Sheet, exposing layers of dust. At the edge of the ice sheet, surface melt releases old layers of dirt, dust, pollen, or ash that have traveled thousands of years into the ice. Under sunny weather, the darker areas heat up with radiation, melt the ice underneath, and thus accumulate in tiny cryoconite holes (looking like miniature potholes) and meltwater creeks. — Credit: Julien Seguinot/Flickr

Together, the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets contain more than 99 percent of freshwater ice on Earth. If they both completely melted, they would raise sea level by an estimated 67.4 meters (223 feet). Long-term satellite data indicate that through most of the twentieth century, the ice sheets made very little contribution to sea level, and were nearly in balance in annual snowfall gain and ice or meltwater loss. However, the stability of the ice sheets has changed considerably in the twenty-first century.

Ice Sheets Today offers the latest satellite data and scientific analyses on surface melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet in the Northern Hemisphere and Antarctic Ice Sheet in the Southern Hemisphere. Surface melt on each ice sheet results from a combination of daily weather conditions and the amount of solar energy absorbed by its snow and ice. Air temperatures, pressures, and winds drive weather conditions. The quality of snow, its grain size and color, also influence melt. Soot, wildfire ash, and other surface dust darken the snow’s surface and increase solar energy absorption. The extent and duration of this surface melting is an indicator of changing climate and other conditions. It is a major component of the waning of Earth's ice sheets. 

The Greenland Ice Sheet melt season typically lasts from April 1 to November 1. The Antarctic Ice Sheet melt season typically lasts from November 1 to April 1. 

Ice Sheets Today is produced by NSIDC and funded by NASA as part of the ASINA program.

Other NSIDC Data Analysis Sites

Sea Ice Today: Daily images of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice and seasonal analyses

Snow Today: Daily images of snow data and seasonal analyses