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Greenland’s ice sheet spreads across 1.7 million square kilometres, covering around 80% of the world’s largest island. It undergoes an annual cycle, where ice melts in the summer and in the winter, water freezes and snow falls. This causes it to ‘shrink’ and ‘grow’ throughout the year.

But rising global temperatures have pushed the ice sheet from an equilibrium: the ice created in winter no longer matches the ice lost in summer.

Using two decades of measurements and satellite data, a team of scientists has calculated how much more ice is destined to be lost, even if the world stopped burning fossil fuels today. Prof Jason Box and Dr Ruth Mottram explain what this means for sea levels across the globe.

(Photo: Greenland's ice sheet. Credit: ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½)