Greenland’s Ice Is Melting 6 Times Faster Compared To The 1980s

Greenland is the home of Earth’s second largest ice sheet. The location has been losing ice at an alarming and accelerating pace during the past few decades.

The speed of losing ice has reportedly increased by almost six times, and this could trigger a future sea level rise, says a new study that’s based on about a half-century of data.

Science Alert writes that the findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimated that “Greenland’s glaciers went from dumping only about 51 billion tons of ice into the ocean between 1980 to 1990, to losing 286 billion tons between 2010 and 2018.”

The online publication continues and writes that the result is that out of nearly 14 millimeters of sea level rise in total caused by Greenland since 1972, half of it has taken place in just the last eight years, according to the researchers’ data.

Losses will probably get worse 

The report says that these losses are about to get much worse. It seems that the regions in which there will be the most significant potential ice loss (the frigid far northwest and northeast of the island, which sit up against the Arctic ocean) haven’t changed as quickly as other locations of Greenland.

If they start melting and lose more chunks of ice at a more rapid pace, Greenland’s overall ice loss and sea level rise could be growing even more, and this is definitely a dark future.

“The 1980s marked the transition time when the Earth’s climate started to drift significantly from its natural variability as a result of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases,” said Eric Ringot, an Earth-systems scientist for the University of California at Irvine and NASA.

He continued and said that “The entire periphery of Greenland is affected. I am particularly concerned about the northern regions, which host the largest amount of potential sea level rise and are already changing fast,” he continued.