Researchers have discovered that Greenland’s huge ice sheet is undergoing massive melting, and the amount of ice that has disappeared this week is enough to cover two inches of water in the entire state of Florida.
Melting floods have penetrated into Greenland’s huge ice and snow inland. Data from the Danish government showed that the surface mass of the ice sheet was reduced by 8.5 billion tons on Tuesday alone. Another 8.4 billion tons was lost on Thursday, Reported by Polar Portal Monitoring Website.
The scale of ice loss is so large that the loss on Tuesday alone produced enough meltwater Drown The entire state of Florida in the United States is in two inches or 5 centimeters of water. Melting ice from Greenland flows into the ocean with water, exacerbating the continuous rise in global sea levels caused by human-induced climate change.
“This is a very high level of melting, and it may change the face of Greenland, because it will be a very powerful driving force for the acceleration of melting in the future, so sea levels are rising,” Columbia Glacier Expert Marco Tedesco Say. Part-time scientist at university and NASA.
Tedesco said a high pressure was sucking in and keeping warm air “like a vacuum cleaner” from the further south and keeping it over eastern Greenland, causing the area to reach a record temperature of 19.8 degrees Celsius on Wednesday. As the seasonal snow melts, the darker core ice layer is exposed, which then melts and exacerbates sea level rise.
“We have had such atmospheric events in the past, but now they are getting longer and more frequent,” Tedesco said.
“Snow is like a protective blanket. Once it disappears, you will melt faster and faster, so who knows what will happen when it melts now. It’s amazing to see how fragile these huge ice areas are. I Surprised that the power acting on them is so powerful.”
The melting season in Greenland usually lasts from June to August. According to data from the Danish government, the island has lost more than 100 billion tons of ice since the beginning of June this year. Although the severity of melting is lower than in 2019-11 billion tons of ice were lost a day-the region was affected by 2021 The scale is much larger.
Brad Lipowski, a glaciologist at the University of Washington, said: “It’s hard to say whether this year’s melting will be a record year, but there is a lot of warm and humid air over the ice sheet, causing a lot of melting.”
“For me, what is worrying is the political response, or lack of response. Sea-level rise is like a slow-moving train, but once it starts, it cannot be stopped. This is not good news.”
If all of Greenland’s ice melts, global sea levels will rise Approximately 6 meters (20 feet), Although this is unlikely to happen on any foreseeable timescale, scientists have warned that the world’s largest island is Reaching a critical point The pressure on it due to global warming.
Greenland’s ice is melting faster than at any time in the past 12,000 years. The scientist calculated, With ice loss Run at a certain speed About 1 million tons per minute in 2019.Greenland and another polar Antarctic region of the earth have Lost together 6.3 tons of ice since 1994.
As the temperature continues to rise, the rate of loss of this ice layer is accelerating, changing ocean currents, altering marine ecosystems, and posing a direct threat to the world’s low-lying coastal cities, which are at risk of flooding. A 2019 research paper It was discovered that by the end of this century, the Greenland ice sheet could raise the global sea level by 5 to 33 cm. Lipovsky said that the world is moving towards a “mid-to-high end”.
“This is very worrying,” Tedesco said. “The action is clear-we need to achieve net zero emissions, but we also need to protect the exposed population in coastal areas. This will be a huge problem for our coastal cities.”
