EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS AGO GREENLAND HAD MUCH LESS ICE THAN TODAY

Is modern Greenland ice sheet melt significant?

During the Holocene Thermal Maximum (about ~9000 to ~7000 years ago), the Greenland ice sheet had about 500 meters less thickness than it has had in recent millennia, and its margins had retreated up to ~100 km behind their present-day position (Nielsen et al., 2018). 

The modern Greenland ice melt has amounted to an insignificant 15 mm since 1900 (Fettweis et al., 2017, Fettweis et al., 2008). That’s just 1.5 cm added to sea levels since the 20th century began – and no net contribution for the 60 years between the 1940s and 2000s.