Bad bad news. Scientists in the journal Science are now reporting that the contraction of Greenland's ice sheet is accelerating. Using computer modeling to confirm their satellite data, the team concluded that the ice mass shrank by 273 billion tons a year (or as the Brits like to say..."nearly 300 Lake Windermeres") during the warm summers from 2006 to 2008.  That's roughly a 70 percent increase over what had already been a pretty quick shrink of 166 billion tons a year since 2000.

The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest in the world, behind Antarctica, and could increase sea level by 7 meters in sea level were it to completely melt.