Greenland's melting hits overdrive
Greenland’s melting has spiked.
The second-largest ice sheet on Earth -- only surpassed by Antarctica -- is currently experiencing one of its most extreme melting events on record, similar to a historic melting episode in 2012. The same record-setting mass of warm air that roasted Europe last week has settled over the Arctic region.
This melting event, whose stark overall rise is evident in the National Snow and Ice Data Center graph below, might be dramatic, but it’s an expected result of Earth's warming climes.
"It's no surprise that Greenland keeps setting records for melt and high temperatures," said Josh Willis, a NASA scientist who researches Greenland’s melting glaciers. "The entire planet is getting warmer, but the Arctic is warming faster than every place else."
"Broadly-speaking, this summer has not been surprising to me at all," agreed Zack Labe, a climate scientist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Irvine. Labe noted that climate models from the 1970s predicted accelerated warming in the Arctic. This entire Arctic summer has been significantly warmer than usual, and now there’s boosted warmth from a climate-enhanced heat wave.
Continued, major melting events are a realistic future. "This [warming] is projected to continue without a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions," Labe added.
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Jason Box, an ice climatologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, tweeted that the melt-to-date in southwestern Greenland is already 1.4 times that of the exceptional summer melt in 2012. Over half the ice sheet experienced melting on July 31, with a loss of more than 10 billion metric tons of ice from the surface, according to data from the Danish Meteorological Institute.
Although the current melting event is just one extreme episode, Greenland's greater melting trends are already evident, and it's long-term trends that really matter. Melting has accelerated in Greenland for the last two decades, and recent research found that this rate of melting is unprecedented in at least three and a half centuries -- though likely thousands of years.
"Greenland has had more ice melt than the yearly snowfall can replace since at least the 1990s," said NASA’s Willis. "And this warm spell is consistent with that trend."
"While it is important to note that not every year will feature record warmth or loss of land/sea ice, the long-term trends are clear," added Labe.
If carbon emissions continue on their current course, polar scientists expect Greenland to contribute between 5.5 and 13 inches of sea level rise by the century's end, though this melt is expected to accelerate, profoundly, beyond 2100.
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It’s not just Greenland that’s having a historic year. Amplified warming trends are now conspicuous all over the Arctic. Sea ice in the region is presently at its lowest levels on record for this time of year, and hundreds of unprecedented fires have burned forests in the Arctic circle this summer -- releasing prodigious amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
Melting should peak on Thursday, August 1, noted University of Liège climatologist Xavier Fettweis.
The Arctic is a changed world. And ice-clad Greenland -- holding enough water to raise sea levels by some 23 feet -- is sitting in the middle of it.
"We are watching these huge ice sheets shrink every year now, and there is no sign of that stopping any time soon," said Willis.
Mark was the science editor at Mashable. After working as a ranger with the National Park Service, he started a reporting career after seeing the extraordinary value in educating people about the happenings on Earth, and beyond.
He's descended 2,500 feet into the ocean depths in search of the sixgill shark, ventured into the halls of top R&D laboratories, and interviewed some of the most fascinating scientists in the world.
