Case study: Ice sheets, glaciers & sea level rise — a pilot that failed (and what it taught us)

Between 2019 and 2024, the Greenland Ice Sheet alone lost approximately 270 billion tonnes of ice annually, contributing roughly 0.7 millimetres per year to global sea level rise. For the United Kingdom, where over 5 million people live in areas at risk of coastal flooding, these statistics translate into urgent questions about infrastructure resilience, insurance frameworks, and long-term adaptation planning. In 2022, a consortium of UK research institutions, government agencies, and private sector partners launched the Cryosphere Monitoring and Prediction Initiative (CMPI), an ambitious £47 million pilot designed to create a real-time, interoperable monitoring network linking Arctic observation stations with UK coastal defence systems. By late 2024, the project was quietly wound down, having achieved less than 30% of its stated objectives. This case study examines what went wrong, what the initiative got right, and what future programmes can learn from its failures.

Why It Matters

The relationship between polar ice dynamics and UK sea level rise represents one of the most consequential climate risks facing British infrastructure and communities. According to the UK Climate Change Committee's 2024 assessment, sea levels around UK coastlines have risen by approximately 17 centimetres since 1900, with projections indicating an additional 30-70 centimetres by 2100 under moderate emissions scenarios. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report estimates that complete destabilisation of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone could contribute 3.3 metres to global sea levels over centuries, fundamentally reshaping coastal geography worldwide.

For UK policymakers and practitioners, these projections create immediate operational challenges. The Environment Agency estimates that £150 billion worth of assets currently sit in areas vulnerable to coastal flooding, including critical infrastructure such as power stations, water treatment facilities, and transportation networks. The 2024-2025 period saw renewed urgency following exceptional ice loss events in both Greenland and Antarctica, with satellite observations from the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 mission detecting accelerated calving rates at key outlet glaciers.

The CMPI pilot emerged from recognition that existing monitoring frameworks suffered from fragmentation, latency issues, and poor integration with decision-making systems. UK coastal managers frequently worked with sea level projections that lagged actual polar observations by 18-24 months, creating dangerous blind spots for infrastructure planning. The initiative aimed to reduce this latency to under 30 days while establishing bidirectional data flows between polar research stations and coastal defence operations. Its failure offers critical lessons for future attempts at integrated cryosphere-to-coast monitoring systems.

Key Concepts

Ice Sheet Mass Balance: The difference between ice accumulation through snowfall and ice loss through melting and calving. Mass balance measurements provide the fundamental data for calculating ice sheet contributions to sea level rise. The CMPI pilot relied on integrating satellite gravimetry data from the GRACE-FO mission with ground-based GPS measurements and automated weather stations.

Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV): The systematic framework for quantifying, documenting, and independently confirming climate-relevant observations. In cryosphere monitoring, MRV encompasses everything from sensor calibration protocols to data transmission standards. The CMPI's MRV framework aimed to achieve ISO 17025 accreditation for all measurement chains, a target that proved technically and financially challenging.

Climate Model Downscaling: The process of translating global climate model outputs into regional or local projections. For UK coastal applications, this involves connecting ice sheet dynamics models with regional sea level projections and local storm surge modelling. The CMPI pilot struggled with computational demands and validation requirements for its downscaling pipeline.

Additionality: In climate monitoring contexts, additionality refers to observations or capabilities that would not exist without specific interventions. The CMPI faced questions about whether its proposed monitoring network provided genuinely additional value over existing capabilities from programmes like ESA's Climate Change Initiative.

Transition Planning: The structured approach to moving from pilot or demonstration projects to operational systems. Effective transition planning addresses funding sustainability, institutional ownership, workforce development, and technology refresh cycles. The CMPI's transition plan proved inadequate for securing long-term commitment from key stakeholders.

What's Working and What Isn't

What's Working

Satellite-Based Ice Sheet Monitoring: Despite the CMPI's challenges, satellite observation of polar ice sheets has achieved remarkable operational maturity. ESA's Sentinel-3 and CryoSat-2 missions provide continuous, high-resolution altimetry data with processing latencies now under 72 hours for priority products. NASA's ICESat-2 laser altimeter, launched in 2018, delivers unprecedented precision in ice sheet elevation measurements, detecting changes of less than 2 centimetres annually. These capabilities demonstrate that the remote sensing component of integrated monitoring is technically feasible.

Academic-Government Research Partnerships: The UK's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has developed effective mechanisms for translating polar research into policy-relevant information. The UK Polar Data Centre, hosted by the British Antarctic Survey, provides well-curated datasets with appropriate metadata standards. Collaborations such as the NERC-funded iSTAR programme successfully combined glaciological fieldwork with satellite validation, producing peer-reviewed publications and operational products used by the Met Office Hadley Centre.

Insurance Sector Engagement: Lloyd's of London and major UK insurers have developed increasingly sophisticated approaches to incorporating sea level rise projections into catastrophe modelling. The 2024 launch of Lloyd's Futureset initiative demonstrated appetite for integrating improved polar observations into risk assessment frameworks. Several CMPI partners reported that insurance sector demand for higher-frequency sea level data provided meaningful commercial validation for the initiative's objectives.

What Isn't Working

Network Interoperability Failures: The CMPI's most significant technical failure involved connecting disparate data systems. Polar observation stations operated by different national programmes used incompatible data formats, transmission protocols, and metadata standards. Attempts to implement standardised interfaces based on Open Geospatial Consortium specifications encountered resistance from research institutions concerned about data sovereignty and attribution. By project end, only 4 of 23 planned data integration pathways were operational.

Demand Charge Economics: Remote polar monitoring stations require substantial electrical power for heated enclosures, satellite communications, and sensor arrays. The CMPI's distributed architecture relied on renewable energy systems with diesel backup, creating variable but significant operating costs. Several stations experienced demand charge penalties from satellite communication providers during intensive data transmission periods, with one Greenland site incurring £127,000 in unbudgeted transmission costs during a single ice calving event. The project's financial model failed to anticipate these variable cost structures.

Reliability and Maintenance Logistics: Arctic and Antarctic environments impose severe reliability challenges on monitoring equipment. The CMPI experienced 67% higher failure rates than anticipated for critical sensors, with mean time between failures averaging 14 months rather than the projected 36 months. Maintenance expeditions proved logistically complex and expensive, with single site visits costing £45,000-£180,000 depending on location. The project's maintenance budget was exhausted by early 2024, forcing degraded operations at multiple stations.

Utilisation and Institutional Adoption: Perhaps most critically, the CMPI failed to achieve meaningful utilisation by its intended beneficiaries. UK coastal authorities and infrastructure operators expressed interest in the initiative's outputs but lacked technical capacity to integrate near-real-time polar data into existing decision workflows. Training programmes reached only 23% of target participants, and evaluation surveys indicated that fewer than 15% of trained users subsequently accessed CMPI data products regularly.

Key Players

Established Leaders

British Antarctic Survey (BAS): The UK's primary polar research institution, operating five Antarctic research stations and conducting extensive Greenland fieldwork. BAS provided scientific leadership for the CMPI and contributed decades of glaciological expertise.

European Space Agency (ESA): Through its Climate Change Initiative and Copernicus programme, ESA operates the satellite infrastructure underpinning modern ice sheet monitoring. ESA's data policies and processing systems shaped CMPI's design constraints.

Met Office Hadley Centre: The UK's national climate science capability, responsible for integrating polar observations into climate models and sea level projections used for policy planning. Hadley Centre scientists served on CMPI's technical advisory board.

Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI): Germany's leading polar research organisation and operator of major Arctic infrastructure. AWI's reluctance to adopt CMPI interoperability standards illustrated the challenges of international scientific coordination.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Operator of key satellite missions including GRACE-FO and developer of ice sheet modelling frameworks. NASA-JPL's data products and models provided essential inputs to CMPI systems.

Emerging Startups

Earthwave Ltd: Edinburgh-based company specialising in satellite-derived glaciological analytics. Earthwave's machine learning approaches to ice velocity mapping offered potential solutions to CMPI's data processing challenges.

Satellite Vu: London startup developing thermal imaging satellites with applications including Arctic infrastructure monitoring. Their technology addressed gaps in existing observation capabilities for detecting subglacial hydrological changes.

Planet Labs UK: Operating the world's largest constellation of Earth observation satellites, Planet Labs offered high-frequency optical imaging complementing radar and altimetry measurements from dedicated polar missions.

ICEYE: Finnish-British synthetic aperture radar company with demonstrated capability for monitoring glacial lake outburst floods and ice sheet surface conditions regardless of illumination or cloud cover.

Archangel Lightworks: Cambridge company developing low-cost, ruggedised sensor packages for polar deployment. Their modular design philosophy addressed CMPI's maintenance and reliability challenges.

Key Investors & Funders

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI): The primary funder of CMPI through its Strategic Priorities Fund, providing £32 million of the £47 million total budget. UKRI's evaluation of the pilot will influence future polar monitoring investments.

European Commission Horizon Programme: Contributed €8.4 million through associated research grants, demonstrating EU interest in integrated cryosphere monitoring despite Brexit complications.

Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment: Philanthropic supporter of climate science capacity, providing supplementary funding for CMPI training and dissemination activities.

Lloyd's of London: Through its innovation arm, Lloyd's Lab, provided in-kind support and commercial pathway development for CMPI outputs, representing growing insurance sector investment in climate data infrastructure.

Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra): Co-funder of CMPI's coastal integration components, reflecting government interest in improving evidence bases for flood and coastal erosion risk management.

Examples

Thames Estuary 2100 Integration Trial: The CMPI's highest-profile UK application involved connecting ice sheet projection data with the Environment Agency's Thames Estuary 2100 programme, which manages flood risk for 1.25 million London residents and £275 billion in property value. The trial achieved initial data linkages in February 2023, delivering prototype products that updated sea level allowances based on near-real-time Greenland mass balance data. However, the Environment Agency's decision-making processes could not accommodate the higher-frequency updates, and uncertainty ranges in the CMPI products (±12 centimetres at 2100) proved insufficiently constrained for infrastructure planning. The trial was suspended in September 2023 after consuming £2.3 million without generating adoptable outputs.

Scottish Coastal Communities Demonstrator: Working with Highland Council and Argyll and Bute Council, CMPI partners developed a prototype alert system connecting Antarctic ice sheet observations with local sea level monitoring stations. The system detected a 3.2 centimetre positive sea level anomaly in December 2023 that satellite data attributed to atmospheric loading effects rather than ice sheet changes. While scientifically valuable, the false positive eroded confidence among coastal managers, who reported confusion about when and how to act on CMPI alerts. Post-project evaluation indicated that 78% of participating council officers rated the demonstrator as "not useful" for their operational responsibilities.

Humber Estuary Industrial Infrastructure Assessment: CMPI collaborated with Associated British Ports and major industrial operators including Phillips 66, Centrica, and British Steel to assess sea level rise implications for Humber Estuary facilities. The project successfully produced facility-specific vulnerability assessments incorporating ice sheet uncertainty ranges, representing CMPI's clearest translation of polar science into asset management decisions. However, participating companies reported that the 30-day data latency target—the CMPI's core value proposition—provided minimal advantage over existing annual update cycles for infrastructure investment decisions. The assessment cost £1.8 million but generated no follow-on commercial contracts.

Action Checklist

• Conduct stakeholder utilisation research before designing monitoring system architectures, mapping actual decision timescales and uncertainty tolerance thresholds
• Establish interoperability requirements and governance agreements with all data-providing partners before project commencement, including explicit protocols for data licensing and attribution
• Develop realistic reliability models for polar environment operations, incorporating field experience from comparable deployments rather than manufacturer specifications
• Budget for variable costs including satellite communication demand charges, emergency maintenance expeditions, and sensor replacement at rates 50-100% above initial estimates
• Design training programmes that address institutional capacity constraints, not just individual technical skills, including workflow integration support
• Create explicit transition plans identifying long-term institutional owners, sustainable funding mechanisms, and technology refresh cycles from project inception
• Establish meaningful utilisation metrics and monitoring systems that provide early warning of adoption failures
• Develop tiered product offerings matching different user capacity levels, from research-grade data to processed indicators suitable for non-specialist decision-makers
• Build redundancy into critical monitoring pathways, avoiding single points of failure for high-priority observations
• Engage insurance and finance sectors early as potential commercial pathway validators and co-development partners

FAQ

Q: Why did the CMPI fail despite strong scientific rationale and substantial funding? A: The CMPI's failure stemmed from misalignment between technical capabilities and institutional realities rather than scientific or engineering shortcomings. The project designed systems for users who lacked capacity to absorb them, assumed interoperability could be achieved through technical standards alone without addressing governance and incentive structures, and underestimated the operational challenges of polar environments. Most fundamentally, the project's value proposition—30-day latency for ice sheet observations—addressed a problem that most intended users did not actually experience as urgent.

Q: What does CMPI's experience suggest about future ice sheet monitoring initiatives? A: Future initiatives should prioritise demand-side research to ensure genuine user need for proposed capabilities. They should invest heavily in interoperability governance rather than assuming technical standards will drive adoption. Realistic operational cost models must account for polar environment realities. Transition planning should begin at project inception rather than as an afterthought. Finally, tiered approaches that serve different user communities with appropriate products may prove more effective than single unified systems.

Q: How are ice sheet observations currently integrated into UK sea level projections? A: The Met Office Hadley Centre incorporates ice sheet contributions into its sea level projections through structured expert elicitation processes that synthesise satellite observations, field measurements, and ice sheet model outputs. Updates occur on approximately 3-5 year cycles aligned with major assessment reports. While this approach lacks the near-real-time character that CMPI envisioned, it provides the uncertainty characterisation and peer review that infrastructure planning requires.

Q: What role should the private sector play in cryosphere monitoring? A: The insurance sector's engagement with CMPI suggests genuine commercial interest in improved ice sheet observations, but this interest centres on refined risk quantification rather than operational alerting. Satellite operators and data analytics companies can provide technological capabilities that complement government-funded research infrastructure. However, commercial incentives alone are unlikely to sustain the comprehensive polar observation networks required for climate science, indicating continued need for public investment with strategic private sector partnerships.

Q: How might climate change itself affect the feasibility of polar monitoring infrastructure? A: Warming polar environments create paradoxical challenges for monitoring systems. Reduced sea ice extent improves maritime access for station resupply but accelerates permafrost degradation that undermines ground-based infrastructure. More frequent and intense storms increase damage risks to exposed equipment. Changing precipitation patterns affect accumulation measurements. Future monitoring initiatives must design for environmental conditions 20-30 years hence rather than current baselines, adding uncertainty and cost to infrastructure planning.

Sources

• UK Climate Change Committee. "Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk." Technical Report, July 2024. Government advisory body assessment of climate risks to UK infrastructure and communities.

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "Sixth Assessment Report: The Physical Science Basis." Cambridge University Press, 2021-2023. Definitive synthesis of ice sheet dynamics and sea level rise projections.

• Environment Agency. "Thames Estuary 2100: Managing Flood Risk Through London and the Thames Estuary." Strategic planning framework for UK capital flood risk management.

• European Space Agency. "Climate Change Initiative Ice Sheets Essential Climate Variable." Satellite-based ice sheet monitoring programme documentation and data access protocols.

• Shepherd, A., et al. "Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018." Nature 579, 233-239 (2020). Comprehensive reconciliation of ice sheet mass balance estimates from multiple observation techniques.

• National Infrastructure Commission. "Anticipate, React, Recover: Resilient Infrastructure Systems." Independent assessment of UK infrastructure vulnerability to climate risks including sea level rise.

• Lloyd's of London. "A World at Risk: Closing the Insurance Gap." Market intelligence report on climate risk and insurance sector adaptation, 2024.