A once-shrinking glacier is now growing. That's not necessarily great news.

A glacier.
(Image credit: Nicolas Tolstoï/iStock)

When glaciers are in the news, things are usually looking worse for the wear. But a new NASA study published on Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience brought some surprisingly good tidings.

The report shows that the Jakobshvan Isbrae glacier in Greenland, which was previously one of the Earth's fastest-shrinking glaciers, is actually growing thanks to cooling ocean waters off the western coast of Greenland.

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Box added that Jakobshvan Isbrae is one of the most important glaciers in Greenland because it discharges the most ice in the northern hemisphere.

Unfortunately, there is one caveat — the authors of the study said that the growth is most likely temporary. In fact, per The Hill, the discovery may ultimately be bad news because it means that the ocean temperatures play an even greater role in glacial retreats and advances than scientists previously thought. Read the full study at Nature Geoscience.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.