Researchers monitored satellite images of ice collected by the NASA GRACE satellite. Findings released December 2008 at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco suggest melting ice from Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska has contributed to raising global sea levels.

Warming of the climate around Greenland is believed to have accelerated ice melt and flow of landlocked glaciers migrating out into the ocean, forming floating ice shelves. Greenland has been losing glacial mass for the past 50 years.

NASA has funded an experiment that placed 90 rubber ducks into a drainage hole on the Greenland ice to test how melt waters flow along subglacial channels. No sign has been see of the bathtub toys since they were deposited September 2008.