(Image: Andrew Testa/Panos Pictures)
Read more: “Climate change: It’s even worse than we thought“
The Summit weather station in Greenland sits more than 3000 metres up atop the country’s vast ice sheet. The temperature there on a typical summer’s day is a chilly -10 °C. In July this year, however, the temperature rose above freezing. At one point, , leading to floods that washed away bridges. This was not a one-off event: that absorbs more heat and melts faster (see Losing its sparkle). Along the coastline, the floating tongues of glaciers are breaking up. As these “dams” disappear, the rivers of ice behind them are accelerating and thinning.
Until recently, we thought it would be centuries before Greenland lost a significant amount of ice. The Antarctic ice sheet was expected to grow, with increased snowfall compensating for melting around the edges. The 2007 IPCC report assumed that the two ice sheets would .
Even then, many experts disputed this, and satellite measurements have since shown and climbing. , as well as , suggest that the planet will soon have warmed enough to melt Greenland’s ice sheet entirely – if it hasn’t already become warm enough. The question is how long the melting itself will take.
Most glaciologists now…
