Abnormal temperatures have critically accelerated the melting of Greenland's glaciers

The island lost six billion tons of water every day for a week.

The abnormally high temperature that has set in Greenland resulted in the island losing a critical amount of water for several days. According to CNN, only on July 15-17, Greenland lost six billion tons of water per day.

This would be enough to fill 7.2 million Olympic swimming pools. The melting of the glaciers was connected with the fact that the temperature in Greenland reached 15.5 degrees Celsius, which is 10 degrees above normal.

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Ted Scambos, a senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, said that this melting is “abnormal” given the past 30 to 40 years of data. The recent event was a “spike” of this melting.

Last year, scientists fear new record temperatures and a repeat of 2019, when 532 billion tons of ice melted. The warm spring and July heat this year led to melting of almost the entire surface of the ice sheet. As a result, the global sea level rose by 1.5 millimeters. If all of Greenland's ice melts, it will cause sea levels to rise by 7.5 meters.

The latest research paints an increasingly disturbing picture of what is happening on the largest ice island in the Northern Hemisphere. For example, the work published in February showed that at the bottom of the Greenland ice sheet there is an unprecedented rate of melting, caused by a huge amount of meltwater flowing from the surface. This water is particularly dangerous because it can destabilize the ice sheet above it and lead to massive and rapid ice loss.

In 2020, scientists found that the melting of Greenland has passed the point of no return, and no efforts to prevent global warming will be able to stop it. Another study showed that the rate of melting of the island in recent years exceeds all indicators observed in the last 12 thousand years.

Recall that data from the European Copernicus satellite system showed that the last seven years were the hottest in the history of observations< /strong>. Last year, 2021, became the fifth in the list of the hottest years, in some regions temperature records were registered.

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Based on materials: ZN.ua

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