LOS ANGELES, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- The Greenland Ice Sheet is rapidly melting, forecasting a global sea level rise in the future, according to a new study.
The study, led by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), was published Tuesday in Nature.
The study combined 26 independent satellite datasets to track global warming's effect on Greenland, one of the largest ice sheets on Earth, and the ice sheet melt's impact on rising sea levels, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The findings, which forecast a global sea rise of approximately 3 to 5 inches by 2100, are aligned with previous worst-case projections.
Changes to the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are of considerable societal importance, as they directly impact global sea levels, which are a result of climate change, according to the study.
As glaciers and ice sheets melt, they add more water to the oceans. Increasing rates of global warming have accelerated Greenland's ice mass loss from 25 billion tons per year in the 1990s to a current average of 234 billion tons per year.
This means that Greenland's ice is melting on average seven times faster today than it was at the beginning of the study period. The Greenland Ice Sheet holds enough water to raise sea levels by 24 feet, according to the study.
The paper is the result of an international collaboration between 89 polar scientists from 50 scientific institutions supported by NASA and ESA.
