Climate change is real and it’s happening really fast, so we should all be more concerned than ever!
Days ago, almost 2 billion tons of Greenland’s ice have melted in just a single day. While, there is still plenty of ice in Greenland, that amount is “highly unusual.”
“These melt events result in a changed surface albedo,” Thomas Mote, a research scientist at the University of Georgia who studies Greenland’s climate, told CNN.
Yesterday (13th June), we calculate #Greenland #icesheet lost more than 2 Gt (2 km³) of ice,, melt was widespread but didn’t quite get to #SummitCamp which was just below 0°C
The high melt is unusual so early in the season but not unprecedentedhttps://t.co/Ftg0fkC7AK pic.twitter.com/Y4jQ1FoFRZ
— Greenland (@greenlandicesmb) June 14, 2019
The say “a picture’s worth a thousands words,” never been more perfect than now, as a viral image showing sled dogs,”running on sea ice flooded by surface melt water,” perfectly illustrates the climate change.
The starling photo was captured by Steffen M Olsen, a Danish meteorologist. While on mission to monitorize sea ice and ocean condition in Greenland, he noticed ‘the usually flat white sea ice was covered in water, the result of flooding from Greenland’s ice sheet,’ according to CNN.
“Extreme events, here flooding of the ice by abrupt onset of surface melt call for an incresed (sic) predictive capacity in the Arctic. The photo documents an unusual day. I learn now that it is even more symbolic than scientific to many. Tend to agree,” the meteorologist said.
@SteffenMalskaer got the difficult task of retrieving our oceanographic moorings and weather station on sea ice in North West Greenland this year. Rapid melt and sea ice with low permeability and few cracks leaves the melt water on top. pic.twitter.com/ytlBDTrVeD
— Rasmus Tonboe (@RasmusTonboe) June 14, 2019
According to Olsen, quoted by the Sky News, “the ice that the dogs were on, was around 1.2m (4ft) thick and that they had ‘about 870m water below us’.”
The ice melting season, usually runs from June to August in Greenland, but according to the Danish Meterological Institute(DMI), this year it started on 30 April.
Communities in #Greenland rely on the sea ice for transport, hunting and fishing. Extreme events, here flooding of the ice by abrupt onset of surface melt call for an incresed predictive capacity in the Arctic @BG10Blueaction @polarprediction @dmidk https://t.co/Y1EWU1eurA
— Steffen M. Olsen (@SteffenMalskaer) June 14, 2019
“As the ice in this region is relatively thick and fracture free, the meltwater is unable to drain away through cracks in the ice as it would normally and hence the challenging conditions for the dog sleds,” Climate researcher at the DMI, Ruth Mottram said. “Last week saw the onset of very warm conditions in Greenland and in fact much of the rest of the Arctic, driven by warmer air moving up from the south. his led to a lot of melting ice, both on the glaciers and ice sheet and on the still existing sea ice.”
Sources https://edition.cnn.com; https://news.sky.com
