Randall F. Dean reports NASA GRACE satellite data on Greenland ice loss: roughly 277 gigatons per year over the last 20 years, totaling about 5.5 trillion tons. Each year, enough cold fresh water equivalent to Lake Michigan flows into the North Atlantic.
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The numbers are staggering. NASA has been tracking the Greenland ice sheet with their GRACE satellites since 2002, and the number is almost unbelievable. The Greenland ice sheet has lost an average of 277 gigatons of ice. Not in 20 years, that's each year for the last 20 years. That's 5,500 gigatons of ice that have melted in 20 years. And when you consider that a gigaton is a billion tons, that means that more than 5 trillion tons of ice has melted in the last 20 years. This roughly translates to 11 quadrillion pounds. That's how much fresh water has flowed into the North Atlantic from Greenland in just the last two decades. A mind-boggling number. It's actually a bit more fresh water than is contained in all of Lake Michigan. We're putting a Lake Michigan's amount of cold, fresh water into the North Atlantic every year.