A stunning satellite image captures Greenland’s snow-covered winter landscape, where glaciers meet the sea.

The coastline is edged with fjords and shifting sea ice, some newly formed and some carried from the north. Ocean currents carve delicate spirals into the frozen expanse, while scientists track the region’s ice growth in a year marked by unusually warm Arctic temperatures.

Greenland’s Winter Blanket

Greenland remains icy throughout the year, but winter adds an extra layer of snow and ice. The satellite image above, taken on February 24, 2025, captures the southern part of the island, showcasing its snow-covered ice sheet, massive glaciers, and swirling sea ice along the coast. The image was taken by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite.

Fresh snowfall brightens the ice sheet, giving it a pristine white appearance. However, some areas in the south are partially obscured by thin cloud cover. In contrast, during summer, melting can reveal dark-colored particles that have built up near the ice sheet’s edges, creating a brownish hue.

Glacial Fjords Along the Coast

The southeastern side of the island pictured here includes about 340 kilometers (210 miles) of the island’s coast. Like other parts of the island’s perimeter, it is lined with numerous fjords—narrow inlets through which glacial ice flows from the land into the ocean.

Just offshore, sea ice floats atop the water of the North Atlantic Ocean. According to Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), much of this is young “drifting ice” that formed locally in the previous few days. Some of it, he notes, could be older ice from the north that was carried south by the strong East Greenland Current.

Swirling Ice Patterns

The ice traces eddies formed by winds and ocean currents, giving the ice “wispy spiral patterns,” said Angela Bliss, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. She notes that toward the east, the ice encounters the warmer waters of the West Spitsbergen Current, which prevents the ice from drifting even farther from the coast.

Still deep in the winter season, sea ice across the Arctic continues to grow. When this image was acquired, the sea ice extent along Greenland’s East Coast was about average. However, Arctic-wide, sea ice in late February was exceptionally low for the time of year due to a warm winter. Scientists like Meier and Bliss will continue to watch the sea ice growth until it reaches its annual maximum extent around early March.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview.