For decades, the dominant narrative was that Greenland’s meltwater would flow straight into the oceans, driving sea levels higher. A new study, however, shows this isn’t the case. In reality, most of the water is refrozen before it ever makes it that far.
Source: Report24.news; Heinz Steiner; 30. September 2025
Ironically, Greenland — long presented as the dramatic tipping point heralding an impending apocalypse — has proven to be a stubborn disruptor of expectations. Research recently published in Nature Communications under the title “Greenland ice sheet runoff reduced by meltwater refreezing in bare ice” demonstrates that the ice behaves quite differently from what climate models predicted. Instead of acting like a breached dam releasing torrents into the sea, the ice sheet absorbs large amounts of meltwater, freezes it again at night, and prevents it from ever reaching the ocean. According to the authors, earlier models were off by as much as 67 percent. Gigatonnes of meltwater that were long assumed to cause dramatic rises in sea levels are, in fact, trapped and refrozen within the ice sheet itself.
The reason for this discrepancy lies in a fundamental misunderstanding of the ice structure. In climate models, bare glacier ice was treated as a sealed, impervious block — like a granite countertop where every droplet immediately runs off. But in reality, the surface functions more like a porous sponge. The water seeps into the ice, becomes trapped, and then freezes again overnight. The researchers write: “Runoff that originates on bare ice is often assumed to entirely and immediately contribute to sea level rise, even though increasing field evidence points to significant retention of meltwater within the ice itself.”
Looking back at climate predictions of past decades reveals a repeating pattern of exaggerated forecasts. In the 1970s, the world was warned of an imminent new Ice Age. In the 1980s, it was claimed island nations would sink beneath the sea by the year 2000. In 2007, leading experts confidently asserted the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013. We are now twelve years past that deadline — and ice continues to cover the waters around the North Pole. Yet the repeated failures of climate models to make accurate predictions rarely penetrate public discussion. Economists, who routinely revise their quarterly growth forecasts, suffer no loss of credibility — and the same seems true of climate forecasters. Explanations are always found for why predictions fall short, but the core alarmist claims remain intact.
The new findings from Greenland are a stark reminder of how much uncertainty continues to surround supposedly “settled science.” Many unknown variables still cloud projections, making climate models less reliable than often portrayed. The pattern remains the same: always assume the worst, use fear to drive headlines, and label it as consensus science. But real science is cautious and evidence-driven, not alarmist rhetoric tailored for mass media attention.
