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25-09-2026 07:00

A new study shows that Greenland and Antarctica lost 12.5 trillion tonnes of ice since 1979. This huge melting of ice caused world sea levels to rise by about 3.2 centimetres.

Scientists used satellite data to track the changes over forty years. They discovered that the ice sheets were stable in the 1970s and 1980s, but melting became much faster after 1990. Warmer ocean water causes most of this damage by melting ice from under the glaciers. Scientists explain that every centimetre of higher sea level puts two to three million more people at risk of dangerous flooding.

Even though ice loss slowed down a little bit between 2020 and 2023, experts warn that this was only short-term weather and the long-term trend remains very dangerous.

Difficult words: melting (when ice turns into liquid), ice sheet (a very big piece of ice which covers a large area), glacier (a large river of ice).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.