Greenland ice sheet melting at record rate, warn scientists

GREENLAND’S ice sheet melted at unprecedented levels last year, according to satellite data that suggest that lower levels of ice loss in 2017 and 2018 were anomalies caused by unusually cold weather.

Levels of ice loss in 2019 reached more than 500 billion tons, breaking a record set in 2012 by 15 per cent.

The ice sheet, a significant contributor to sea level rises, lost more than five times the level of mass in 2019 as it did in 2017 and 2018.

A paper, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, concludes that 2019 is a return to the pattern of significant melting seen over the past decade.

The figures come as scientists warn that Greenland is reaching a point of no return and that glaciers would continue to shrink even if global temperatures ceased to rise.

Greenland ice melts from its glaciers into the sea and is replaced by snowfall in a natural annual cycle. In previous decades, the ice sheet usually gained back as much ice as it lost but that has become less common.

While lower levels of melting occurred in 2017 and 2018, the scientists suggest that these were anomalies caused by unusually high levels of snowfall and cold summers. Anticyclonic conditions that push warm air along the west side of the ice sheet have become more common.

Scientists from the German Aerospace Centre and Nasa collected the data using a satellite, combined with simulations from climate models.