the Melting reached its highest ever in the year 2012.
Greenland is melting. And it goes fast.
in Fact, melting of the greenland ice sheet today, 7 times faster than it did in the 90’s.
the 3,800 billion tonnes of ice is melted from the Greenland ice sheet since 1992, and it has got the sea level across the globe to rise by over 1 centimeter.
Such is the conclusion of a new kæmpestudie in Nature with over 80 authors, where researchers all over the world have worked together to measure ice sheet melting, by means of satellites.
Therefore, you can in many media read about the researchers who, with good reason, warns about the fast rendering.
‘Huge amounts of ice are disappearing faster than expected’, writes TV2.dk. ‘Greenland loses ice seven times faster than in the 1990s’, you can read on DR. dk.
But zooms you in on the development since the year 2012, indeed, there is cautious optimism that the track among the scientists, Science.dk have spoken with.
“It goes fast with the melting, but the figures in fact show that it does not become worse by the year. There is even a slight slowing down in the recent past. It gives hope and motivation,” says William Colgan, who is senior scientist at GEUS, and one of the many scientists who have participated in the new study, to Science.dk.
the Study is made of global cooperation IMBIE, supported by rumagenturerne NASA and ESA.
Researchers around the world have contributed with data on the ice sheet, as derived from, among other things lasermålinger from the satellites and satellite photos over a number of years in almost 30 years.
another of the researchers who have contributed, Shfaqat Abbas Khan, who is a professor at DTU Space, Kongens Lyngby, north of Copenhagen.
He says that the melting of the greenland ice sheet increased steadily from 1992, but reached its peak in the summer of 2012. Then thought the researchers, that the development would continue, but:
“It peaked in 2012. It was a rekordvarmt year, but it suggests that it vejrmæssigt was very unique, when you are looking at a longer period of time. When we measure with satellites year after year we can see if it is a trend that looks set to continue, or fortunately, it is an unusual weather variation,” he says.
In the year 2012 alone melted around 335 billion ton ice sheet, but between 2013 and 2017 it dropped to 217 billion tonnes per year.
And in the past year in the studio, 2018, lost the ice sheet around 111 billion tons.
“It is still significantly more than before the turn of the millennium, but it suggests that we are not aboard a runaway roller coaster,” says William Colgan.
This means that the curve is drilled to a little bit under the intergovernmental panel on climate change IPCCs so-called worst predictions of the ice sheet. But it’s still not quite good:
“the IPCC has made three different projections for rising sea levels, depending upon how quickly the ice sheet melts. We are still the closest to the highest, as one may call ‘the worst case scenario,'” says Shfaqat Abbas Khan.
Although there has been a slight slowing down compared to the wettest years for the ice sheet, is melting the is still fast, and it is seriously, say the researchers.
“the Study documents a rise in sea level of 1 centimeter over 30 years. However, if it continues at the current pace we are going to see an increase of an additional 20 centimeters in the year 2100 from Greenland alone,” says William Colgan.
In the everything sounds the IPCC’s calculations, approximately 400 million people will be exposed to violent annual flooding by the year 2100, when all the sea level rise, in addition to those from Greenland, are taken into account.
“I hope that the morale in the story is a good motivation to take action. If we want to reduce climate change, so we need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” says William Colgan.
