A 110 square kilometer glacier shattered into a thousand pieces in a Greenland fjord by the impossible name of Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden. Scientists are now used to these phenomena, given that Greenland lost one million tons of ice per minute in 2019, but such a massive break was never seen before. In one fell swoop an area equal to the double of the island of Manhattan ended up in the ocean. And experts say there is nothing more to be done: Greenland warming has reached the point of no return.
An ice shelf, called 79N, descends on the Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden, which as it approaches the sea divides into two sections, one of which continues its slow path to the north. It is precisely this piece, called the Spalte glacier, which broke off, shattering into blocks that in a few weeks will melt in the sea water. The 79N ice shelf is the largest left in Greenland, after all the others have suffered severe downsizing due to global warming. It is 80 kilometers long and 20 kilometers wide, but for some years it has shown signs of subsidence, with the formation of puddles of water on the surface, responsible for hydro-fractures that weaken the structure.
Jenny Turton, a polar researcher at Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany, reminded the BBC that “the atmosphere in this region has warmed by around 3 degrees Celsius since 1980, and in 2019 and 2020, it has experienced record summer temperatures.” The Milne Glacier, located near the Canadian island of Ellesmere, has already lost 80 square kilometers of ice and has only 106 square kilometers left: at the beginning of the 20th century it had 8,600. The summer of 2020 was particularly hot, but the annus horribilis of Greenland ice melt was 2019, with 530 billion tons, a record that raised the planet’s sea level by 1.5 millimeters. For every second that passed, a quantity of water equal to that contained in seven Olympic-sized swimming pools poured into the sea. When all of Greenland’s ice melts, sea levels will rise six meters and all coastal cities will be destroyed. Even for the most pessimistic scientists, however, this is a scenario that will only occur in a thousand years.
A few days ago, a research published in Nature Communication found, however, that Greenland has now reached a point of no return and that even if global warming ends tomorrow, the balance between fallen snow and melted ice would not re-establish. Glaciers are attacked from above and below: the warmer air forms pools of water that dig the surface, the warmer sea erodes the submerged part with greater speed. The cold fresh water poured into the Atlantic Ocean could also have repercussions on the flow of the Gulf Stream, which could no longer reach Northern Europe at its current intensity, starting a mini ice age, like the one that lasted from the 15th century. to the 17th century, when skating on the Thames and the frozen canals of Holland. But this time not everything will be so fun.
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