Greenland ’s ice sheet has go by the point of no return . Off the back of decades of warming and thawing , Greenland ’s ice sail will proceed shrinking even if climate change was hypothetically contain today , a new survey has revealed .
This is what ’s know as aclimate tipping point . In respect to an ice rink sheet , it bring up to the point at which its seasonal hertz are drive out of kilter . The quantity of water supervene upon by snowfall each winter are no longer enough to cross the amount of piss lost by thawing and outflow in the summer .
scientist at Ohio State University study the water ice sheets of Greenland and discovered this is on the nose what ’s pass off here .
" We ’ve been search at these remote sensing reflection to read how ice emission and accretion have varied , " Michalea King , direct author of the study and research worker at Ohio State University ’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center , aver in astatement . “And what we ’ve found is that the Methedrine that ’s discharging into the sea is far surpass the C that ’s accumulating on the control surface of the ice mainsheet . "
report in the Nature journalCommunications Earth & Environment , the researchers look at monthly satellite data that picked up on measurable change in the gravitative theatre of operations above 234 large glacier in Greenland . This was able to give them a clear insight into the pace of ice loss and pee outflow into the surround ocean .
Before 2000 , the ice rink sheets would retain more or less the same mess each class between seasonable moving ridge ( as you may see in the graphical record above ) . However , the inquiry found that the rate of net water loss started to notably increase around 2000 , when the glacier were losing about 500 gigatons of ice each twelvemonth . At this gunpoint , the ice sheet continued to step by step drop off hoi polloi each year as the charge per unit of thawing was too great to be even up by replenishing snowfall each twelvemonth .
“ glacier have been sensitive to seasonal melt for as long as we ’ve been able-bodied to detect it , with spikes in water ice electric discharge in the summer , ” say King . “ But starting in 2000 , you set forth superimposing that seasonal melt on a high baseline — so you ’re go to get even more red ink . ”
“ Glacier retreat has pick apart the dynamics of the whole ice sheet into a constant state of release , ” append Ian Howat , study co - author and professor of earth sciences and magisterial university scholar at Ohio State . “ Even if the mood were to stay the same or even get a little colder , the ice sheet would still be lose muckle . ”
What happens in Greenland does n’t stay in Greenland , either . It ’s known that melting ice from Greenland is a lead contributor to sea - level rise . It ’s count on that Greenland ’s melting ice sheets caused the oceans to rise by2.2 millimetre in just two monthsin 2019 . By 2100,some estimatessay it will have stimulate 70 to 130 millimetre of worldwide ocean - level rise . Other estimatessay it could be two-fold that . Either way , this is potential to result inflooding and far-flung damagein coastal communities across the satellite .
