New Record, Greenland Loses 586 Billion Tons of Ice Sheet This Year

KOMPAS.com – Climate change and global warming are real. Data and research indicate that the Arctic and South Pole ice sheets are melting faster than in previous years.

This year, Greenland lost 586 billion tonnes of ice sheet from its surface. This figure is far greater than the average melting rate of ice per year since 2003, which was 259 billion tonnes.

In fact, this amount exceeds the recorded record of 511 billion tonnes in 2012. This research has been published in the journal Earth & Environment Communications.

“The ice sheet in Greenland is always melting. The problem is, the ice is melting faster over time, “said research leader Ingo Sasgen, a geological scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany as quoted from NBC News, Sunday (23/8/2020).

Also read: Greenland’s Ice Sheet is Melting, Scientists Say It Will Not Recover

Last year, the melting ice masses in Greenland alone led to a global sea level rise of up to 1.5 millimeters.

“This figure may seem small, but to the world, it is a very large number,” said another scientist who is a NASA ice scientist, Alex Gardner.

With rising sea levels and ice sheets that continue to melt, floods and other natural disasters are more likely to occur.

Also read: Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheet Melt More, This Is The Impact

One of the factors causing the ice sheet in Greenland to melt so fast is called by scientists as Greenland Blocking. Gardner said Greenland Blocking is the emergence of high air pressure over Canada that changes the direction of the north wind.

This causes warmer air in the warmer south to rise from the US towards Canada, and through Greenland.

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