Glaciers in Greenland are melting 5 times faster than 20 years ago
Global warming has accelerated the rate of melting of the glaciers in Greenland by five times, compared to the situation 20 years ago.
If the ancient ice sheet completely melts, the sea level will rise by at least 6 meters.
Scientists from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) studied thousands of glaciers in this region, Reuters reports.
They concluded that the rate of melting has entered a new phase over the past two decades.
| Glaciers of Greenland. Photo: mtellioglu/Depositphotos |
With the help of satellite images and 200,000 old photographs, scientists have studied the development of glaciers for 130 years. 20 years ago they were losing 5-6 meters per year, and now this number was 25 meters.
Compared to the pre-industrial period, the planet has warmed by 1.2°C. According to scientists, the year 2023 will “almost certainly” be the warmest in the last 125,000 years.
According to Jørgen Eivind Olesen, director of the Climate Institute at Aarhus University (Denmark), the decrease in temperature will require a global effort to minimize greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
“I think we can prepare for these glaciers to continue to melt at an increasing rate.” he said.
In addition, glaciers in Greenland are often used to predict the effects of climate change on the ice sheet.
“If we see glaciers losing mass several times faster than in the last century, that might lead us to expect the ice sheet to follow the same path, only slower and longer.” – said William Colgan, a senior researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
The Greenland ice sheet was responsible for 17.3% of observed sea level rise between 2006 and 2018, and glaciers for 21%. There are about 22,000 glaciers in Greenland.
We will remind you that earlier we wrote that the mountains of Nepal have lost a third of their ice due to warming.
Read also: Global warming has accelerated, we are in the early stages of an emergency climate situation – scientists
