Ice Sheet Mass Balance – a groundbreaking scientific discovery
29th January 2025
Before we had satellites, it was very difficult to assess and monitor the Earth’s ice. We only had data collected by scientists visiting the polar regions, and the areas we study are so vast it would be impossible to monitor them manually. However, since the launch of Earth Observation satellites like ESA’s ERS-1 and CryoSat missions, and NASA’s IceSat missions, our understanding of these complex regions has been transformed.
To mark the European Space Agency’s (ESA) 50th anniversary, they have created this brochure detailing 12 groundbreaking scientific discoveries that have been made possible thanks to the ESA Earth Observation programmes. One of the successes that ESA have highlighted is the Mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets as assessed by The IMBIE Team, led by CPOM.
IMBIE is an international collaboration of 100 polar scientists, supported by ESA and NASA, who are working to chart the sea level contribution of the polar ice sheets. In their latest assessment report (published in 2023), led by CPOM’s Inès Otosaka (Northumbria University), the team revealed that ice loss had accelerated during the 29-year record of satellite observations and that this accounted for a ‘significant’ increase in the global sea level.
ESA released this animation in 2023, based on the data from this report, showing Ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica.