TOTAL MELT
Arctic heatwave causes 12BILLION tons of ice ‘to vanish in 24 hours’ – as Greenland endures rare 22C roasting
A HEATWAVE has melted half of the huge Greenland ice sheet to slush.
This is the second melt event to affect the area this year and it is on its way to breaking the record for the most water loss from an ice sheet ever recorded.
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The melt event is well outside of the range of what is considered normal for this time of year as areas around the ice sheet have reached 22°C.
The worst melt on record happened in 2012 and that incident involved 97% of Greenland's ice sheet experiencing some sort of melt.
Melting as extreme as this caused rivers to become so intense that they broke bridges in coastal towns.
Sea levels rose by eight tenths of a millimetre after the 2012 melt which saw 250billion tons of ice lost.
Experts think that 248billion tons of ice has already been lost during this recent melt and there could be lots more to come.
The melt has left pools of blue water all over the once pristine snow covered surface and revealed grey ice that dates back to nearly 20,000 years ago.
It was spurred on by the record breaking heatwave that scorched Europe recently, resulting in temperatures that are 15 to 30 degrees above normal.
Melting has occurred on over 60% of the ice sheet's surface so far and 12.5billion tons of ice has flooded into the ocean.
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Satellite images have shown the full extent of one days worth of melting, with melting pools and rocks appearing.
The melting ice at the surface is forming rivers and leaking into deep into the ice sheet, which is speeding up the overall melt.
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According to the , the melting may have already caused sea levels to rise by 0.5 millimetres.
that ice melting periods like this can occur every 250 years but the fact one occurred in 2012 suggests that these events are becoming more frequent and climate change is becoming an even more pressing issue.
Climate change explained
Here's the basic facts...
- Scientists have lots of evidence to show that the Earth’s climate is rapidly changing due to human activity
- Climate change will result in problems like global warming, greater risk of flooding, droughts and regular heatwaves
- Each of the last three decades have been hotter than the previous one and 17 of the 18 warmest years on record have happened during the 21st century
- The Earth only needs to increase by a few degrees for it to spell disaster
- The oceans are already warming, polar ice and glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising and we’re seeing more extreme weather events
- In 2015, almost all of the world's nations signed a deal called the Paris Agreement which set out ways in which they could tackle climate change and try to keep temperatures below 2C
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In other news, sea level ‘doomsday’ simulator reveals whether your home would be wiped out by rising oceans.
Parts of Europe could disappear as Nasa warns Antarctica is melting 6 times faster than it was 40 years ago.
And experts think climate change could cause areas of the ocean to turn a "deep green" colour by 2100.
Are you worried about melting ice in the Arctic? Let us know in the comments...
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