The Greenland ice sheet is disappearing much faster than previously thought.
Greenland’s ice sheet, a vast frozen expanse three times the size of Texas, is melting at an alarming rate, 20% faster than previously estimated. This translates to a staggering 30 metric tons of ice vanishing every hour, contributing to rising sea levels and potentially disrupting global heat distribution. The stark findings, revealed in a recent study, underscore the urgency of addressing the climate crisis.
The research recently published in the journal Nature cracks the code on disappearing Greenland glaciers. Scientists always knew ice chunks chipped off the edges, but measuring them was tricky. This study nails it down, highlighting a worrying acceleration in the melting process that’s contributing to rising sea levels. It’s a wake-up call to understand and address this critical aspect of climate change.
“Almost every glacier in Greenland is retreating. And that story is true no matter where you look,” said Chad Greene, a glaciologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the lead author of the study. “This retreat is happening everywhere and all at once.”
According to The Guardianscientists employed artificial intelligence methods to analyze 38 years of data, mapping over 235,000 glacier end positions at a 120-meter resolution.
The study revealed that the Greenland ice sheet has lost approximately 5,000 square kilometers of ice at its edges since 1985, equivalent to a trillion tons of ice.
The ice measurements reported a yearly loss of 221 billion tons since 2003. The recent research adds another 43 billion tons annually, bringing the total loss to an average of 30 million tons per hour.
