If this keeps up, Greenland might actually turn green.
For the first time in more than a century, the misleadingly named island’s ice cap almost completely melted this month, according to a University of Georgia professor’s analysis of NASA satellite data. The research showed that 97 percent of Greenland’s ice sheet surface thawed at some point in July, the first time that’s happened since scientists began gathering satellite data 30 years ago. Observers haven’t seen Greenland’s ice melt this much since 1890.
Thomas Mote, the head of UGA’s geology department, attributed the thaw to a combination of an unusually hot summer and a weather pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation that trapped warm air over Greenland. Although the area’s weather has gotten hotter, Mote says he’s not ready to blame it on climate change yet. But that could change if such events become more frequent.
“I don’t think you can attribute any single four days to climate change,” he says. “We have seen increasing melt that is related to warming in and around Greenland in the last 30 years… If we see this occurring again every five years or 10 years instead of every 150 years, it would certainly tell us something about the health of the ice sheet.”
If climate changes causes ice caps to melt, many scientists believe it will cause ocean levels to rise, potentially flooding coastal cities. Ocean levels aren’t rising as a result of the Greenland thaw because melted ice at high elevations is refreezing in place, Mote says, but the runoff from lower-lying areas is causing floods, even knocking out bridges in parts of Greenland.
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