Nature · 人与自然 / 气候 / 科普 / 卫星观测
格陵兰与南极冰盖：卫星"对账"揭示 44 年流失 11 万亿吨冰
A study reconciling 50 satellite estimates finds the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lost 11,309 billion tonnes of ice between 1979 and 2023, lifting sea level by 3.14 centimetres — with fast-flowing glaciers, not surface melt, doing most of the damage
中文导读
格陵兰与南极的冰盖，储存着足以让全球海平面抬升六十多米的淡水，是地球气候系统里最"慢热"却也最致命的一环。可过去几十年，关于它们到底流失了多少冰、流失得多快，不同的卫星测量方法给出的答案常常对不上。2026 年的一项国际研究，首次把约五十种相互独立、彼此分歧的卫星估测"对账"成一个统一口径的记录：1979 至 2023 年间，两大冰盖合计流失了 11,309 亿吨冰，使全球海平面抬升了 3.14 厘米。更出乎意料的是，约 84% 的流失并非来自表面融化，而是源于"冰川动力失衡"——流动越来越快的冰川把冰倾泻入海、冰山不断崩解。本文带你读懂这份"对账"背后的方法、机理与局限，以及它对你我脚下每一条海岸线意味着什么。
一、原文精读
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【1】The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which together hold enough frozen fresh water to raise the world's oceans by more than sixty metres, are shedding ice at a pace that grows harder to ignore each year. Yet precisely how much ice, and how fast, has long depended on which satellite record one chose to trust.
【2】Now an international team, coordinated through the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise, has reconciled roughly fifty independent estimates into one authoritative record. By aggregating satellite altimetry, which gauges ice-surface height, with gravimetry, which weighs the ice from orbit, they produced a forty-four-year account rival methods had never agreed upon.
【3】The verdict is stark. Between 1979 and 2023 the two ice sheets shed 11,309 billion tonnes of ice, a figure whose scale—enough to bury Europe beneath more than a metre of water—is difficult to grasp, let alone reverse.
【4】Of that total, the Antarctic Ice Sheet contributed 4,780 billion tonnes, raising global sea level by 13.3 millimetres, with Greenland supplying most of the remainder. Greenland's losses, modest at the outset, have since accelerated so sharply that researchers describe the trend as entering "hyperdrive."
【5】More surprising is what has driven the melt. Fully eighty-four per cent of the loss, the authors calculate, stems not from surface melting but from dynamical imbalance—the quickening flow of glaciers that dump ice into the sea as icebergs calve from their snouts, a process that, once begun, can feed on itself.
【6】"The ice sheets are melting away fast," one coordinator observed, adding that fast-flowing outlet glaciers, whose margins are bathed in ever-warmer seawater, now discharge far more ice than snowfall can replenish.
【7】For the hundreds of millions who live within a metre of the sea, the message is uncomfortable. The thirty-one millimetres of rise already delivered may sound trivial, but it is cumulative, and every extra tonne lost pushes low-lying coastlines closer to the flooding scientists have long predicted.
【8】The authors are candid about their limits. Because the fifty estimates still diverge in places, the record carries an uncertainty of 565 billion tonnes and cannot alone say whether losses will follow their current trajectory; what it establishes is a single agreed baseline from which the future can be measured.
【9】For a public inclined to treat polar ice as a distant abstraction, the finding is at once humbling and instructive. The ice sheets are not passive scenery but slow-moving reservoirs of change, and knowing how much they have surrendered is the indispensable first step toward deciding how much more we will allow them to lose.
原文出处：本文根据《自然》（Nature，2026-09）刊发的 IMBIE 冰盖物质平衡研究（Otosaka 等，综合约 50 种卫星估测）、欧洲空间局（ESA）报道《Faster-flowing glaciers fuel decades of polar ice loss》（2026-09）及美联社（AP）相关报道综合整理改写，供学习使用。
三、长难句分析（三步拆解法）
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which together hold enough frozen fresh water to raise the world's oceans by more than sixty metres, are shedding ice at a pace that grows harder to ignore each year.
主干：The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets ... are shedding ice at a pace（主语 + are shedding + 宾语 + 状语）
非限制性定语从句：which together hold enough frozen fresh water to raise the world's oceans by more than sixty metres（which 指代 ice sheets）
定语从句：that grows harder to ignore each year（that 修饰 pace）
考点：非限制性定语从句；that 引导限制性定语从句；不定式 to raise 作结果状语
译文：格陵兰与南极的冰盖，共同储存着足以把全球海平面抬升六十多米的淡水冰，正以一年比一年更难忽视的速度流失冰量。
By aggregating satellite altimetry, which gauges ice-surface height, with gravimetry, which weighs the ice from orbit, they produced a forty-four-year account rival methods had never agreed upon.
主干：they produced a forty-four-year account（主语 + produced + 宾语）
方式状语：By aggregating satellite altimetry ... with gravimetry（"通过把……与……汇总"）
定语从句①：which gauges ice-surface height（修饰 altimetry）
定语从句②：which weighs the ice from orbit（修饰 gravimetry）
省略关系词的定语从句：rival methods had never agreed upon（修饰 account，省略 that/which）
考点：介词 By + 动名词作方式状语；两个 which 定语从句；省略关系代词的定语从句
译文：通过把测量冰面高度的卫星测高法，与从轨道上"称量"冰量的重力测量法汇总在一起，他们得出了一条此前各种方法从未达成一致的、长达四十四年的记录。
Between 1979 and 2023 the two ice sheets shed 11,309 billion tonnes of ice, a figure whose scale—enough to bury Europe beneath more than a metre of water—is difficult to grasp, let alone reverse.
主干：the two ice sheets shed 11,309 billion tonnes of ice（主语 + shed + 宾语）
同位语：a figure（解释前面的数字）
whose 定语从句：whose scale ... is difficult to grasp（whose 修饰 figure）
插入的同位语：enough to bury Europe beneath more than a metre of water（解释 scale）
考点：同位语；whose 引导定语从句；let alone + 动词原形
译文：从 1979 年到 2023 年，两大冰盖流失了 11,309 亿吨冰——这个数字的规模（足以把整个欧洲埋在一米多深的水下）难以把握，更不用说逆转了。
Fully eighty-four per cent of the loss, the authors calculate, stems not from surface melting but from dynamical imbalance—the quickening flow of glaciers that dump ice into the sea as icebergs calve from their snouts, a process that, once begun, can feed on itself.
主干：eighty-four per cent of the loss ... stems not from surface melting but from dynamical imbalance（not ... but ... 结构）
插入语：the authors calculate（"作者们估算"）
同位语：the quickening flow of glaciers（解释 dynamical imbalance）
定语从句 + 时间状语从句：that dump ice into the sea as icebergs calve from their snouts（that 修饰 glaciers；as 引导时间状语从句）
同位语 + 定语从句 + 省略式状语：a process that, once begun, can feed on itself（once begun = once it is begun）
考点：not ... but ... 并列；插入语；同位语；as 时间状语从句；once + 过去分词
译文：作者们估算，足足 84% 的流失并非来自表面融化，而是源于"动力失衡"——即冰川不断加速流动、把冰倾泻入海、冰山从冰川前端崩解的过程，而这一过程一旦开始，就会自我强化。
Because the fifty estimates still diverge in places, the record carries an uncertainty of 565 billion tonnes and cannot alone say whether losses will follow their current trajectory; what it establishes is a single agreed baseline from which the future can be measured.
主干：the record carries an uncertainty ... and cannot alone say whether ...（并列谓语）
原因状语从句：Because the fifty estimates still diverge in places（"因为……"）
宾语从句：whether losses will follow their current trajectory（whether 引导，作 say 的宾语）
主语从句：what it establishes is a single agreed baseline（what 引导主语从句）
定语从句：from which the future can be measured（"介词 + which" 修饰 baseline）
考点：Because 原因状语从句；whether 宾语从句；what 主语从句；"介词 + which" 定语从句
译文：由于这五十种估测在某些地方仍有分歧，这条记录带有 565 亿吨的不确定性，也无法单独判断流失是否会延续当前的走势；但它所确立的，是一条可以据此衡量未来的、各方一致同意的基线。
四、全文大意
格陵兰与南极的冰盖共同储存着足以把全球海平面抬升六十多米的淡水冰，却正以一年比一年更难忽视的速度流失冰量；而"到底流失了多少、多快"，过去几十年里一直取决于你选择相信哪一条卫星记录。2026 年，一支由"冰盖物质平衡比较实验"（IMBIE）协调的国际团队首次把约五十种相互独立、彼此分歧的卫星估测"对账"成一条权威记录：通过把测量冰面高度的卫星测高法与从轨道上"称量"冰量的重力测量法汇总在一起，他们得出一条此前各种方法从未达成一致的、长达四十四年的记录。结论鲜明：1979 至 2023 年间，两大冰盖合计流失了 11,309 亿吨冰，使全球海平面抬升了 3.14 厘米；其中南极贡献 4,780 亿吨、抬升 13.3 毫米，格陵兰占其余大部，且格陵兰近年损失加速、进入"超速档"。更出人意料的是，足足 84% 的流失并非来自表面融化，而是源于"动力失衡"——冰川不断加速流动、把冰倾泻入海、冰山从冰川前端崩解，而这一过程一旦开始就会自我强化。一位协调者形容："冰盖消融得很快"，出海口冰川的边缘正浸泡在越来越暖的海水中，排放的冰远超降雪所能补充。对全球数以亿计住在海拔不足一米的人们而言，这 31 毫米的上升听起来微不足道，却是在累积的，每多流失一吨冰，就把低洼海岸线推向科学家早已预测的洪涝。当然，作者也坦率承认局限：五十种估测仍有分歧、记录带有 565 亿吨的不确定性，也无法单独判断未来走势；但它的价值在于确立了一条可衡量未来的统一基线。对习惯于把极地冰看作遥远抽象概念的公众而言，这一发现既令人谦卑又发人深省：冰盖不是静止的风景，而是缓慢流动的"变化之源"，精确认识它已经失去了多少，正是决定我们愿意再让它失去多少的、不可或缺的第一步。
五、思考与仿写
思考题：结合第 5 段与第 6 段，为什么"动力失衡"比"表面融化"更令人担忧？"冰山崩解"这一过程为何能"自我强化"（feed on itself）？请用自己的话说明这条机制链。
仿写题：仿照第 9 段 "The ice sheets are not passive scenery but slow-moving reservoirs of change, and knowing how much they have surrendered is the indispensable first step toward deciding how much more we will allow them to lose."（"not A but B" 并列结构 + 动名词短语作主语 + 名词化表达）的句式，围绕「节约资源」「保护环境」或「珍惜时间」写一个句子。