Against the high temperatures of the past week, there is a relatively cool start to the summer, Van den Broeke emphasizes. “In the record year 2012, the total mass loss was therefore a lot greater.”
Even limited global warming in the coming decades will have a destructive effect on the ice sheet. “The mass loss increases quadratically with the increase in temperature,” says Van den Broeke.
Faster and faster
Last year 89 polar scientists concluded that the Greenland ice sheet has been melting ever faster since 2000. Where in the 1990s some 33 billion tons of ice were lost per year, this has increased to 254 billion tons per year in the past decade. There has not been a year since 2000 when the net amount of ice increased.
The current amount of ice melting on Greenland is leading to a global sea level rise of 0.7 mm per year, the researchers calculated. That is about a quarter of the total amount of sea level rise, which is around 3 mm. If the entire Greenland ice sheet were to melt, it would cause a global sea level rise of 7 meters.
The temperature in Greenland looks set to drop again in the coming days. The melting season usually ends in August.
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