The Greenland ice sheet is melting: – Expert: – It is so enormous

On Tuesday and Thursday this week, 17 billion tons of ice melted in Greenland. The Danish monitoring service Polar Portal describes this as a massive collapse.

The region also recorded a record hot in recent days by about 20 degrees, according to reports Watchman.

Cicero researcher Maria Sand tells Dagbladet that these are alarming numbers. She explains that you can compare the Greenland ice sheet’s mass balance to a bank account.

– In winter you get money in the form of snow, and in summer you spend money in the form of melting snow. At the end of the year, you then have to consider whether it has reached zero, says Sand and adds:

– The problem is that in recent decades it has gone red and it can be said that the financial crisis is approaching. This means that the melting periods are getting longer, and therefore more ice and snow is melting each year. It’s also record hot, which means the ice below will also melt.

– It doesn’t look good

So far this year, 100 billion tons of Arctic island ice has melted, far less than in the record year 2019, but melting is happening over a larger area, the overview shows. polar gate.

On Tuesday, 8.5 billion tons of ice melted from the surface, but another 8.4 billion tons were lost on Thursday. Tuesday’s thaw is enough to cover Florida with five centimeters of water, according to The Guardian.

Sand explains that higher temperatures directly contribute to melting sea ice and rising sea levels. The researcher explains that it could have several consequences, such as that it could alter ocean currents, and it would also affect wildlife living outside the ice.

– Now explode or carry

– It’s one of the largest magma I’ve seen. It’s bulky, and it doesn’t look good, she says.

She explains that it is estimated that in the next 70-80 years, sea level could rise anywhere from 3.7 to 22.4 cm., just from melting Greenland ice alone. The amount of dissolution depends on the amount of carbon dioxide we will emit.

The rule of thumb is that for every inch of sea level rise, an additional six million people in coastal areas experience flooding, according to the researcher.

– We’ve started a train we can’t stop. It is said that if all the ice in Greenland had melted, the sea level would have risen by seven metres, but it would take thousands of years, she says.

– drives the ecosystem

In 2019, Greenland lost 500 billion tons of ice and meltwater, contributing to a 40 percent sea level rise that year, most of it in the one year since satellite recording began in 1978.

There are extreme temperatures and high pressure over Greenland right now. There’s a lot more ice melting inside, so there’s a lot more flowing in as well. Sand says it drives the entire ecosystem.

We have to think differently

She explains that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, so it affects the melting of ice there largely.

When the ice melts, it will affect both humans and Greenland’s wildlife.

NTNU researcher, Bjørn Munro Jenssen, is an expert on Arctic wildlife. He explains that when the sea ice melts, many different types of animals will move north.

Polar bears threaten

If both seals and whales disappear from Greenland, so does the food of polar bears. Then they must also move north.

Warnings: – Very sad

– If polar bears do not find their food in the sea, they will have to go to the beach to find food. Then they have to find alternative prey that is difficult to hunt, such as different bird species, musk cats, and reindeer. They often visit eider colonies, and can eat all the eggs in the colonies. Sometimes they visit towns and cities. Jensen told Dagbladet that many problems were seen in Canada, but also in Svalbard to an increasing degree.

He further explains that in recent years, it has been observed that Greenland’s ecosystem is changing. For example, there were more mackerel on the east coast, which in turn attracted killer whales.

For people and Inuit in Greenland, this means that it may also be difficult to hunt both whales and seals, which have a long tradition in Greenland, says the researcher.