PanARMENIAN.Net - The Greenland Ice Sheet saw a sharp spike in the rate and extent of melting last week, with 18 billion tons of water running into the North Atlantic in just three days. Satellite photos reveal melt ponds dotting the ice cover, particularly near the coasts, Axios reports.
Greenland's melting ice is the top annual contributor to global sea level rise. How much of and how quickly the ice sheet is lost will determine the fate of coastal cities from Hong Kong to Miami.
An uptick in ice loss that occurred during the July 15-17 period sent enough water careening off the ice sheet to fill 2.4 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, said Ted Scambos, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, in an interview.
Put another way, it was the equivalent of covering all of West Virginia in four inches of water per day, for a total of 1 foot.
While this sounds extreme, Scambos said it doesn't rank as the highest melt surge scientists have witnessed in recent years. Periods of exceptionally mild weather, even at the highest reaches of the ice sheet, have become common since about the...
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