Once-stable glaciers in northeast Greenland are now shrinking as a result of regional warming.

Shfaqat Khan at the Technical University of Denmark in Kongens Lyngby and his colleagues analysed satellite and airborne-elevation measurements of three glaciers that comprise the 600-kilometre-long northeast Greenland ice stream. The measurements revealed that, after more than a quarter of a century of stability, this stream began to thin between 2003 and 2006. The team then looked at ocean and atmospheric temperature data and determined that warmer air temperatures, beginning in 2003, probably led to the melting of sea ice in the region, allowing the glaciers to flow more freely into the ocean.

These ice-loss measurements exceed projections made for this region, and so models of global sea-level rise may underestimate Greenland's contribution over the coming century.

Nature Clim. Change http://doi.org/rxb (2014)