After decades of global warming, Greenland’s ice sheet has reached the ‘climate tipping point’, and will continue shrinking, even if climate change ended today.
Global warming has seen the ice sheet in Greenland melting for decades, but scientists have now confirmed that it has reached the point of no return.
Termed the ‘climate tipping point’, the ice sheets have reached a point where the quantities of water replaced by snowfall are out of balance with the rate at which the ice is thawing in the summer months. This seasonal imbalance means the ice being discharged into the ocean is exceeding the ice accumulating on the surface of the ice sheet.
A recent study conducted by Ohio State University was the first to discover what was occurring in Greenland.
Speaking on the study, lead researcher Michalea King stated that the researchers had been “looking at these remote sensing observations to study how ice discharge and accumulation have varied.”
She then went on to say that in regards to the findings, “the ice that’s discharging into the ocean is far surpassing the snow that’s accumulating on the surface of the ice sheet.”
Scientists began noticing the net water loss increasing around the year 2000 when the glaciers were losing about 500 gigatons of ice each year. From this point, the ice sheets have continued to gradually lose mass each year.
The most alarming thing is that the risks posed by the melting ice are not just a problem for Greenland. Scientists estimate that by 2100, these melting ice sheets will have caused 70 to 130 millimetres of global sea-level rise. Other, less optimistic estimates state it could be double that.
Either way, things are looking grim, as a rise in sea level means flooding and widespread damage for coastal communities across the planet.
