Drones reveal hidden details about Greenland’s melting ice

For the first time, scientists have captured detailed measurements of water vapor high above Greenland’s vast ice sheet, using a custom-built drone to reach the upper atmosphere. 

The breakthrough provides a new window into how water moves across and away from the island – and offers an important step toward more accurate models of ice loss in the Arctic’s rapidly changing climate.

The study was led by Kevin Rozmiarek, a doctoral researcher at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado Boulder. The research could reshape how scientists calculate Greenland’s future contributions to global sea level rise.

A melting giant with global impacts

Greenland’s ice sheet is a freshwater giant, containing about 8% of Earth’s total supply. But it’s rapidly shrinking. 

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), between fall 2023 and fall 2024 alone, Greenland shed around 55 gigatons of ice and snow – enough to fill over 20 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. 

The island has lost ice every year for nearly three decades, with more than 5 trillion tons melted away since 1992.

Most of that loss comes from visible processes: glaciers calving into the sea and melting ice and snow at the surface. But there’s another, less obvious way ice can vanish – through sublimation, when ice transforms directly into vapor without becoming liquid first. 

Some studies suggest that in parts of Greenland, up to 30% of summer snow might sublimate into the atmosphere. Where that vapor ends up, however, has been a mystery.

According to the experts, it is unclear whether that vapor recondenses and returns to the surface, or if it escapes the system entirely. Understanding the fate of this water is key to calculating Greenland’s long-term water balance – and predicting how much melt will contribute to sea level rise.

Flying into the unknown

Traditionally, studying Arctic water vapor meant mounting costly plane flights into inhospitable environments and hauling air samples back to a lab. But Rozmiarek’s team found a better solution: a drone. 

Outfitted with advanced sampling equipment and boasting a wingspan of 10 feet, the drone was launched 104 times during the summer of 2022 from a camp in Greenland’s interior run by the University of Copenhagen’s East Greenland Ice-Core Project.

The drone ascended to nearly 5,000 feet on each flight, collecting air samples at different altitudes. The goal was to measure the isotopes – unique combinations of hydrogen and oxygen – within water vapor molecules. These isotopic signatures act like a molecular fingerprint, helping scientists trace the vapor’s origin.

“Isotopes are water’s fingerprints,” Rozmiarek said. “By following these fingerprints, we can trace back to the source where the water vapor came from.”

Until now, scientists had good data on where Greenland’s water starts and ends – coming in from tropical air currents and freezing on the surface. But little was known about what happens to that water while it’s moving through the atmosphere. This missing piece was crucial.

Predicting the future of Greenland ice 

Once the team gathered their isotopic data, they compared it to an existing climate model of the Arctic water cycle. 

The results were striking: the model significantly underestimated how much precipitation Greenland receives. But when the researchers added their new isotopic data into the simulation, the model aligned closely with reality.

“It’s really important to be able to predict what’s going to happen to Greenland in the warming world as accurately as possible,” Rozmiarek said. “We demonstrated how useful water vapor isotope data is by successfully improving an existing model.”

This kind of refinement could lead to better predictions of melt rates, atmospheric circulation, and even how Greenland’s changes affect weather patterns far beyond the Arctic.

Sensitivity of Greenland’s ice 

History shows that Greenland’s ice is sensitive to warming. About 125,000 years ago, during a naturally warmer period in Earth’s history, the ice sheet was much smaller, and global sea levels were up to 19 feet higher than today. 

Now, with the planet once again heating up, scientists fear we could be heading toward a similar future.

The United Nations estimates that sea level rise already affects one billion people globally, threatening communities and ecosystems. Understanding exactly how – and how quickly – Greenland’s ice sheet might respond to further warming is critical.

Next steps in the Arctic

Rozmiarek hopes to return to Greenland for more drone flights and extend this new method to other parts of the Arctic. The research is just beginning, but its implications are vast.

“It’s like we just figured out how to discover fingerprints at a crime scene,” he said. “This is a concrete step forward in understanding where water is going and where it is coming from in this important system at a time when we need it most.”

By combining cutting-edge drone technology with isotope science, researchers are piecing together the invisible flows of water that shape the future of one of Earth’s most vulnerable regions.

The study is published in the journal JGR Atmospheres.

Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

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