Remember what we said before about not being able to mess around with nature’s wrath? A new piece of information about the Greenland Ice Sheet confirms it once again, unfortunately. Of course, climate change is to blame, an aspect that’s often being neglected.
According to NDTV.com, Danish researchers discovered that in only 20 years, the Greenland Ice Sheet lost enough water to sink the USA. The climate is becoming warmer in the Arctic compared to any other part of Earth.
4,700 billion tons of ice lost by the Greenland Ice Sheet
The measurements began in 2002, meaning two decades ago. During this time, it was discovered that the Greenland ice sheet lost 4,700 billion tons of ice transformed into water. This contributed to 1.2 centimeters of sea-level rise, and it’s enough to cover the entire territory of the US by half a meter.
Andrew Shepherd, a climate scientist from the University of Leeds, declared for NASA, as LiveScience.com quotes:
As a rule of thumb, for every centimeter rise in global sea level, another 6 million people are exposed to coastal flooding around the planet,
On current trends, Greenland ice melting will cause 100 million people to be flooded each year by the end of the century, so 400 million in total due to sea-level rise.
Considering that the Greenland ice sheet has enough water to raise the oceans by over seven meters, there you have another major reason why we all should be concerned about climate change.
The US-German GRACE program (aka Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) is to blame for gathering satellite imagery to reveal that the ice melt is most intense near the Arctic, meaning at the edges of the ice sheet.
Hopefully, scientists will find new ways of tackling the climate change issue, as it doesn’t show signs of going away in the near future.
