Damage to Greenland's ice cap now irreversible
In this file photo taken on August 17, 2019, an iceberg calving with a mass of ice breaking away from the Apusiajik glacier, near Kulusuk, a settlement in the city of Sermersooq located on the island of the same name on the southeastern shore of Greenland.
The melting of Greenland’s ice cap has gone so far that it is now irreversible, with snowfall no longer able to compensate for the loss of ice even if global warming were to end today, according to researchers.
“Greenland’s glaciers have passed a tipping point of sorts, where the snowfall that replenishes the ice sheet each year cannot keep up with the ice that is flowing into the ocean from glaciers,” said a statement from Ohio State University, where several authors of a study published on August 13 in Communications Earth and Environment are based.
Climate change is having a devastating effect on the world’s glaciers, with the ice melt posing a threat to millions of people around the world.
Alarming reports about the ice melt on the vast Arctic island — which is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet — have multiplied in recent years.
Eighty-five percent of the surface of Greenland, an island of 2 million square kilometers or four times the size of France, is covered in ice.
“The study confirms results from a lot of other studies ... that the combination of melt and calving of icebergs explains the large amount of ice lost from Greenland over the last couple of decades,” Ruth Mottram, a climatologist at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute said.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the ice cap lost around 450 billion tons of ice per year, which was compensated by snowfall, the scientists said after analyzing 40 years of data.
But the ice melt has accelerated this century, climbing to 500 billion tons and it is no longer sufficiently replenished with snow.
“The Greenland ice sheet is losing mass at accelerated rates in the 21st century, making it the largest single contributor to rising sea levels,” the study said.
The melting ice actually causes more ice to melt, as the meltwater that collects on the ice sheet absorbs more of the sun’s radiative force than snow and ice do — snow and ice reflect sunlight back into space.
In addition, the loss of ice exposes the permafrost, or frozen soil, which when thawed releases powerful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping heat.
