A study published in the journal (NatureScientific Research revealed, on Wednesday, that the Greenland Ice Sheet lost 5,091 square kilometers of its area between 1985 and 2022, in the first complete estimate of the area of the lost ice sheet.
This shrinkage means the loss of an amount of ice weighing 1.034 gigatons (1.034 trillion kilograms) as a result of the retreat of the glaciers, with the snow melting during “break-off” processes that occur when blocks of ice break away from the glaciers.
This study is also the first to provide a full estimate of how much snow Greenland has lost due specifically to the retreat of glaciers.
The study indicates that previous estimates of changes in the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet miscalculated these losses by a decrease of up to 20 percent because they neglected the retreat of the glaciers.
The area of 5,091 square kilometers lost is approximately equivalent to the area of Trinidad and Tobago.
The study used more than 200,000 satellites and conducted observation and monitoring of the locations of the glaciers using artificial intelligence to analyze changes over time.
Alex Gardner, a geoscientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is a co-author of this study, said, “In Greenland, in these areas on the edges, everything is somewhat receding and disintegrating.”
He added, “Previous methods were not really accurate in measuring this change in the ice cover. But the change is huge.”
The Greenland Ice Sheet is one of two remaining ice sheets in the world, the other being the sheet extending over Antarctica.
The sheet, which consists of hundreds of glaciers, covers 80 percent of Greenland.
If the Greenland Ice Sheet melted completely, it would cause global sea levels to rise by about 7.4 metres.
Scientists say that the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet will inevitably raise sea water levels by at least 27 centimeters due to the global warming that is already occurring, in light of the impact of climate change on the temperature of the Arctic four times faster than in the rest of the world.
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2024-01-17 21:56:59