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Viewers of The Expedition won’t notice much, but Greenland is losing 30 million tons of ice every hour. In the last forty years, 20 percent more ice has melted than generally thought, and that may have consequences for ocean currents.
Source: The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Thursday, January 18, 2024, 7:08 p.m
The Greenland ice sheet, which covers about 80 percent of Greenland, lost an area of 5,091 square kilometers between 1985 and 2022, an area about the size of the Limburg and Antwerp provinces combined. This corresponds to a loss of 30 million tons of ice per hour. This emerges from a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Due to global warming, large amounts of ice have been melting on Greenland for decades. To measure exactly how much, scientists measured the height of the ice sheet and its weight using gravity data, among other things. This allowed them to find out how much ice ended up in the ocean and caused sea levels to rise.
For this new study, scientists examined 240,000 satellite images to determine the retreat of Greenland’s glaciers, most of which are already below sea level. From the data, scientists concluded that a total of one trillion tons, or 5,091 square kilometers, of ice had melted between 1985 and 2022. “Almost every glacier in Greenland has thinned or retreated in recent decades,” study leader Chad Greene told the California Institute of Technology.
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ocean current
Despite the frightening numbers, scientists do not expect melting to have a major impact on sea level rise. After all, a large part of the glacier ice was already under the water surface when it melted.
Since melting releases enormous amounts of fresh water into the ocean, this can pose a threat to the stability of the so-called Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc). This is a large system of ocean currents that includes the Gulf Stream. Thanks to this system, warm water flows north from the tropics, allowing us in Western Europe to enjoy a mild climate, while colder and saltier water flows south.
Scientists around the world have been observing a weakening of the Amoc current for some time and fear that the system could come to a standstill in the future, with drastic consequences for the climate. According to the authors of this new study, the recorded mass loss is enough “to affect ocean circulation around the world.”
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