Preliminary data from a NASA-funded Greenland survey point to a two-degree centigrade rise in regional ocean water temperatures in less than a decade.

For the first time ever, a team of researchers took the data from a subglacial Greenland channel in February of this year using a custom-built, remotely operated vehicle equipped with sonar, laser-ranging and a mass spectrometer.

Preliminarily, what we’ve been able to show is, at least during this year, ocean water in this region is almost two degrees warmer than it was less than 10 years ago, Britney Schmidt, a Cornell University astrobiologist and the ongoing Icefin project’s principal investigator, tells me in Reykjavik. It’s crazy amounts of warming; we’re losing this ice very rapidly and it’s much warmer than I would have expected; two degrees in 10 years is insane, she says.