It Rained In Greenland’s Ice Sheet for the First Time Ever Recorded

By: | August 21st, 2021

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Climate change is getting worse. The changes are happening faster than predicted by scientists. As global temperatures rise, time is running out.

For the first time rain fell for several hours at the Greenland Summit Camp, a research outpost on the island. Over the weekend, temperatures in Greenland rose above freezing for the third time in less than a decade. According to the National Snow & Ice Data Center(NSIDC), about 7 billion tons of water are on the ice sheet.

This resulted in a massive melt event. According to the scientists, the amount of loss of ice mass was seven times higher than the usual daily average.

Glaciologist Ted Scambos at the University of Colorado Boulder said, “Greenland, like the rest of the world, is changing,”

 “We now see three melting events in a decade in Greenland – and before 1990, that happened about once every 150 years. And now rainfall: in an area where rain never fell.”

“Like the heatwave in the [US Pacific] northwest, it’s something that’s hard to imagine without the influence of global climate change.”

Laurence C. Smith, a climate scientist said “it portends a future of greater meltwater runoff” that will “amplify Greenland’s melting and contribution to global sea-level rise.”

As per Earther reports, Greenland’s melting ice could result in the rise of the sea level by an entire foot by 2100. 

But Greenland has the largest ice mass in the northern hemisphere. If that happens, almost all coastal cities and communities will be devastated.

Nidhi Goyal

Nidhi is a gold medalist Post Graduate in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

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