What the Claim Says about Greenland
A post recently shared on X (formerly Twitter) claims that the temperature in Greenland hasn’t changed for the last 160 years. The post even uses a graph from a real scientific paper to support the idea. The post then jumps to the conclusion that this means climate change and global warming are fake or a “swindle.”
But this message is missing context. The graph does come from a real study published in 2018. However, it was only one part of the study and doesn’t tell the full story. The paper didn’t say that Greenland’s temperature has stayed the same. In fact, it talks about Greenland warming in different parts. The study also only looked at a small section of Greenland, not the entire island. The graph used showed average monthly and yearly temperatures, not temperature changes compared to a longer-term average, which is how climate scientists usually track global warming.
This use of the graph is misleading because it cherry-picks data and leaves out key facts that tell a very different story.
What the Real Data Shows about Greenland
Scientists have been carefully tracking Greenland’s temperatures for a long time. According to reliable data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Greenland is clearly warming. In fact, temperatures in the Arctic, where Greenland is located, have risen by over 4°C higher than the 1901–2000 average in some areas.
Another respected source, Berkeley Earth, also shows that Greenland’s temperature has been rising steadily. Their data confirms that some parts of Greenland have warmed more than 4°C. This is not a small change — it’s a clear sign of long-term warming.
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Different studies have looked at different regions of Greenland and found that the warming is not the same everywhere. One study found that along Greenland’s west coast, temperatures increased by more than 10°C from 1991 to 2012. Other coastal regions showed increases ranging from 2°C to 6°C between 1981 and 2012.
Historic Warming and Record Temperatures Across
Researchers have also studied Greenland’s northern and central areas. A study published in 2023 found that temperatures in these areas are the warmest they’ve been in over 1,000 years. This means the warming trend is not only real — it’s historic.
When looking over a longer time using two separate sets of data, scientists found that all parts of Greenland have warmed, especially over the last five years of the study (from 2013 to 2017).
From 1952 to 2017, coastal Greenland warmed at a rate of 0.23°C per decade. Some areas warmed faster: southeastern Greenland at 0.70°C per decade and northern Greenland at 0.42°C per decade. Even inland areas, which are colder and more stable, saw temperatures rise by 0.13°C per decade between 1997 and 2017. Winters warmed even more than summers.
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Greenland also made headlines recently for recording its hottest-ever temperature: 23.6°C in 2021. Compare that with its coldest-ever temperature of -69.6°C in 1991 — also the coldest ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere.
How This Warming Impacts the Ice
All this extra heat doesn’t just affect the air — it’s also melting ice at an alarming rate. A detailed study covering the years from 1972 to 2018 found that every 1°C rise in temperature caused Greenland to lose 116 billion tonnes of ice each year. Between 1991 and 2019, summer temperatures in Greenland rose by 1.7°C and winter temperatures jumped by 4.4°C.
This ice loss isn’t just from the surface. The oceans surrounding Greenland are also getting warmer, speeding up the melt from underneath. That means both the air and the water are working together to melt the ice even faster.
Scientists have created a graph often called the “climate stripes” for Greenland. It shows a clear and dramatic rise in temperature over time. The deeper red the stripe, the warmer the year — and in recent decades, the stripes are nearly all deep red. That’s visual proof that Greenland has not stayed the same over the last 160 years.
