(CNN) They may appear frozen and immovable, but glaciers, which contain some 69% of the world's freshwater, are slowly slipping into the sea.

A new NASA project is tracking the movement of glaciers and ice sheets to show how fast they are melting, and predict what effects this may have on global sea levels and climate.

Working in conjunction with the US Geological Survey and several universities to analyze satellite data, NASA's Global Land Ice Velocity Extraction (GoLIVE) project is able to provide a "near-real-time view of every large glacier and ice sheet on Earth."

The texture on the surface of flowing ice, such as Heimdal Glacier in southern Greenland, allows NASA to map nearly all the flowing ice in the world.

The data will enable researchers to understand what effect atmosphere and ocean conditions have on ice sheets and how that changes how much ice is flowing into the ocean.

"We can use the method to identify which areas to keep an eye on, or which events might lead to a rapid change," Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in a statement