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Greenland’s lakes are getting uglier—and fast

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Maine professor Jasmine Saros has visited West Greenland every summer since 2011 to collect data on the region’s fresh waters.

In 2022 , she conducted her usual rounds of sampling and assessment on the 10 representative lakes that her and her colleagues routinely visit.

The next year , summer 2023 , Saros returned to find the familiar lakes utterly transformed.

“You could see it right away,” she says.

Satellite imagery suggests the change wasn’t specific to the lakes.

With the added heat and water, the land changed too, becoming measurably greener.

It’s unclear what conditions or how much time would be needed for the lakes to revert back to their former state, says Saros .