ArabiaWeather - The Greenland Ice Sheet may have reached a tipping point, setting it on an irreversible path to complete disappearance.
According to researchers at the University of Ohio, the snowfall that normally feeds Greenland's glaciers each year is no longer able to keep up with the pace of snowmelt.
This means that the Greenland Ice Sheet - the second largest ice mass in the world - will continue to lose ice even if global temperatures stop rising.
In their study, published Thursday in the journal Nature, the scientists reviewed 40 years of monthly satellite data from the more than 200 large glaciers flowing into the ocean via Greenland.
Said Michalia King, lead author of the study and a researcher at The Bird Polar Center and Climate Research at Ohio State University. In a press release, "What we found is that the ice discharged into the ocean far exceeds the snow that accumulates on the surface of the ice sheet."
The complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet could raise the sea level by 23 feet (7 meters) by the year 3000, and if that happened, the ocean would engulf coastal cities around the world.
Greenland ice is already the largest contributor to sea level rise in the world. In only the next 80 years, the current melt rate will add 2.75 inches (6.9 cm) to global sea levels, according to a study published in December.
"The retreat of glaciers has put the dynamics of the entire ice sheet in a state of constant loss," said Ian Huat, glaciologist and co-author of the paper.
The study found that over a short period of 5-6 years since the first decade of the twenty-first century, the amount of melting ice has increased dramatically. About 500 gigatonnes of ice melts annually, but the glacier recharge has not increased. This means that the mass of the Greenland ice sheet will increase by one year every 100 years.
Source: sciencealert.com
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