The coldest and highest parts of the ice sheet in Greenland are warming up quickly and are thus showing unprecedented changes.
Temperatures on the cold island have risen markedly in recent decades.
Greenland is now 1.5 degrees warmer than the average in the 20th century. Not only that – the ice also melts much faster due to the temperature changes, new data from ice samples shows.
A number of researchers at the institutes Alfred Wegener, Niels Bohn and the University of Bremen carried out the study, which was published in the research journal Nature Wednesday.
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Seeing clear signs
– We found that the decade 2001-2011 was the warmest in 1,000 years, says head of the study Maria Hörhold.
The warming has only continued since 2011. The temperatures are therefore probably underestimated, the researchers point out.
– Now we see a clear signature of global warming, says Hörhold and points out that the core samples from the ice have not shown very clear signs of global warming until now.
It has been a long time since the data from ice samples has been updated, in fact as far back as 1995.
The tipping point
– These data do not change what we already knew about the warming in Greenland, but it nevertheless increases the seriousness of the situation, says glaciologist Isabella Velicogna at the University of California-Irvine.
Although parts of Greenland are now 1.5 degrees warmer than in the 20th century, this does not necessarily mean that the ice sheet has reached the tipping point.
Recent research suggests that Greenland’s tipping point is 1.5 degrees or more on average. according to The Washington Post several researchers believe that it will happen around 2030, and that it will probably be even warmer on the cold island than it is now.
