Over 30 years, Greenland has lost an amount of ice equal to the area of 36 “New Yorks” – scientists
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Researchers are worried that Greenland is “greening”. The area of ice that has melted in Greenland over the past three decades is about 36 times the area of New York (783.8 km²).
Greenland lost more than 28 thousand km² ice, and the amount of vegetation doubled from the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s. And this will have very negative consequences for the environment.
Scientists came to this conclusion after analyzing satellite images, reports CNN. The research was published in the journal Nature.
“We have seen signs that ice loss is triggering other reactions that will lead to further ice loss and the ‘greening’ of Greenland.
Melting ice will expose the rocks, which will then be “colonized” by tundra and shrubs. – said one of the authors of the study, Jonathan Carriwick.
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Greenland is the largest island in the world, mostly covered with ice and glaciers. However, the ice is increasingly giving way to wetlands (they became 4 times more) and shrubs.
This could have very serious consequences for climate change and sea level rise, researchers say. What is happening in Greenland?
Warmer air temperatures cause the loss of ice, which increases the temperature on land and contributes to the melting of the so-called “permafrost” – the frozen layer below the Earth’s surface.
In the process of melting, carbon dioxide and methane are released, which warm the planet, increasing global warming.
Melting permafrost also causes soil instability, which can affect infrastructure and buildings.
Water flowing from melting ice moves sediments and silt that eventually form wetlands and marshes.
But it is snow and ice that reflect solar energy, preventing excessive heating of some parts of the Earth. As the ice disappears, these areas absorb more of the sun’s energy, raising the earth’s surface temperature.
After all, the melting of the ice increases the amount of water in the lakes, threatening floods. And the increase in the number of plants along with this changes the flow of sediment nutrients into the coastal waters.
“These changes are critical, especially for indigenous people, whose traditional hunting activities depend on the stability of these delicate ecosystems. Additionally, the loss of the Greenland ice sheet is a significant driver of global sea level rise.”says lead study author Michael Grimes.
In the future, the island is threatened with even more extreme temperatures than those it already suffers from.
It will be recalled that earlier scientists said that global warming accelerated the rate of melting of glaciers in Greenland five times in 20 years, and the ice cover of the planet decreased by 450 meters in 200 years.
Global warming poses a threat to our planet, in particular, to the Himalayan and Kilimanjaro glaciers.
Read also: Thousands of emperor penguin chicks died in Antarctica as a result of global warming – scientists
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