A recent study has found that the Antarctic ice sheet mass has slightly increased in size in recent years, prompting a wave of claims on social media (such as here and here) that global warming may be reversing.

Published in March 2025 by researchers at Tongji University in Shanghai, China, the study reported that the Antarctic ice sheet gained approximately 108 billion tons of ice annually between 2021 and 2023. This data focused on four glacier basins in the Wilkes Land-Queen Mary Land region of the eastern Antarctic ice sheet, has been misinterpreted by some climate skeptics as evidence that climate change is a "hoax."

DW Fact Check looked at the numbers.

Claim: Posts on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) have gone viral, with one  stating, "Moral of the story: Never believe a climate alarmist," garnering over 270,000 views. Another viewed more than 55,000 times, claimed,"Scientists have had to pause the Climate Change Hoax Scam."

DW Fact check: Misleading

One post even featured a GIF that the user believed showed new land emerging off the coast of Dubai due to falling sea levels — apparently unaware of the artificial Palm Islands constructed there between 2001 and 2007.

The findings in the Chinese study are based on publicly available data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites, which have been measuring the Earth's gravitational field since 2002 and have documented changes in the planet's ice and water masses.

Antarctic ice sheets: Correct data misinterpreted

The data may be correct, but its interpretation by conspiratorial social media users is not — a situation not helped by the researchers' decision to insert an increasing average trend curve next to the preceding decreasing curve depicting ice mass.

"This is perfect fodder for people who are intentionally looking to spread disinformation," said Johannes Feldmann, a physicist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research near Berlin.

Feldmann emphasized that climate science relies on long-term data — typically over 20 to 30 years — to identify meaningful trends. "Two, three or even five years are far too little to identify a long-term trend," he explained.

Cherry-picking short-term data is a common tactic among climate change deniers. "There are always phases where the increase [in temperature] levels off a bit, which people suddenly take to mean: global warming has stopped, the trend is reversing," Feldmann added. "But it's never turned out to be true."

Understanding natural fluctuations

The Antarctic ice sheet, like many natural systems, is subject to fluctuations. A 2023 study from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom highlighted how meteorological events, such as unusually heavy or light snowfall, can temporarily affect ice mass and sea levels. Therefore, fluctuations such as those observed between 2021 and 2023 are to be expected.

"We're dealing with a natural system that is subject to fluctuations — and this is nothing unusual," said Angelika Humbert, a glaciologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, northern Germany. "We sometimes have years with a lot of snow and sometimes years with no snow at all, and it's the same for ice sheets."

The Tongji University researchers themselves acknowledged this in a separate 2023 study, linking increased ice mass in eastern Antarctica to unusually high snowfall.

"Given the warmer atmosphere, we know that these snowfall events could increase in the coming years," said Feldmann. "On the one hand, this means more snow could fall more often [on the ice sheets] but also that more could melt — because it's getting warmer.

"This is all well-researched and will continue to be researched," he added. "There was a brief increase [in Antarctic ice mass], but it didn't come anywhere close to replacing the losses of recent decades. The long-term development we are observing is a large-scale loss of the Antarctic ice sheet."

This article is part of a cooperation with the fact check teams of the public broadcasters ARD-Faktenfinder, BR24 #Faktenfuchs and DW Faktencheck.

Edited by: Rachel Baig