Greenland seen from a satellite

This is what southern Greenland looked like at the end of 2012.

We're able to see the sea ice, land ice, and fresh snow thanks to the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

“Melting of this snow, and then melting of the older ice sheet below, will likely resume in March or April,” Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, says on the NASA site. “In recent decades, the retreat of the ice edge has increased due to ice flow and summer melt. Last year’s melt volume was the highest by far in the past 35 years. This melt exposes bare ice near the edge of the ice sheet.”

He adds that the Greenland ice sheet is far smaller than it was tens to hundres of thousands of years ago.

“As the ice sheet retreated millennia ago, it revealed the craggy landscape of fjords and rugged hills seen along the coast,” Scambos says.