In Three Days, Heat Wave Melts Six Trillion Kilograms of Ice
- U-Report
VIVA – Recently, satellite images show that North Greenland hit 15 degrees Celsius this month after a severe heat wave. Because of this, the ice in the area has melted nearly six trillion kilograms in just three days.
A photo from the EU's Copernicus satellite shows tons of sediment flowing into the fjord, a glacial bay that leads out to sea.
Temperatures in the Arctic region hit nearly 16 degrees Celsius, which is unusual for Northern Greenland to stay below freezing, even in summer with a maximum temperature of 0 degrees Celsius.
The extreme heat caused massive melting of the island's giant ice sheet on July 15-17, sending billions of gallons of fresh water out to sea.
Ted Scambos, a University of Colorado scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said the melting was an abnormal.
"The melting of this past week was an abnormal, see the climate average at 30 to 40 years," Ted Scambos remarked.
Danau Es Greenland
- Dok. Greenland Tourist Board
In 2019, the Greenland ice sheet lost an average of one million tons of water every minute the equivalent of filling 200 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.
In February, scientists discovered that the Greenland ice sheet was disappearing from the ground up, increasing the risk of flooding across the planet.
As reported from the Metro website on Friday, July 29, 2022, this surprising discovery is the culmination of a seven-year project focused on Store Glacier.
The large amount of water falling from the surface to the bottom has accelerated the rate of melting. A team from the UK calculated that there were 82 million cubic meters of meltwater/day during the summer of 2014.
During its peak period, the liquid produced was equivalent to the Three Gorges Dam in China that’s the largest hydroelectric station in the world.
