The Greenland ice sheet is melting at an alarming rate

Prominent scientists have announced that the Greenland ice sheet started melting this week, a phenomenon they said is taking place alarmingly early.

Scientists attributed the bizarrely early melt to a weather system pushing warm air and rain over Greenland, but they added that this weather is exacerbating melt already brought on by warming global temperatures.

Melting earlier than expected

Earlier this week, approximately 12 percent of the ice sheet surface showed signs of melting, Peter Langen, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute, told the Associated Press. The melt is taking place about three weeks earlier than normal.

“It’s nothing for July, it’s huge for April,” Langen said.

“It’s disturbing,” he added. “Something like this wipes out all kinds of records, you can’t help but go this could be a sign of things we’re going to see more often in the future.”

At Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, temperatures reached 62 degrees F on Monday, breaking the April record by 6.5 degrees. At the city of Kangerlussuaq, the temperature hit 64 degrees F, which warmer than San Francisco on that same day.

Scientists told the AP that although this melt is being caused by weather; man-made climate change has increased the chance this historic melt could happen.

“Things are getting more extreme and they’re getting more common,” said Walt Meier, a NASA ice scientist. “We’re seeing that with Greenland and this is an indication of that.

“This kind of freakish warm spell is another piece in the puzzle,” he continued. “One freakish thing every once in a while you might expect. But we’re getting these things more often and that’s an indication of climate change.”

Langen said Greenland ice data is derived from observations from on-ice monitors connected to a computer model. NASA typically gauges melt with a satellite, but there are challenges associated with these instruments, Meier said.

The melting of Greenland ice sheet is one of several visible and dire indications of man-made global warming from the incineration of fossil fuels because it can cause sea level rise. If all of Greenland ice sheet melted, which would take hundreds of years, it could add 20 feet or more to global sea level. By the end of the next century, Greenland ice melt by itself could boost sea level by a couple feet.

“The concern is things are moving faster than we thought,” Meier said.

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Image credit: NASA

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