Much has been said about the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet and its threat to raise sea level, but now 89 scientists say the evidence shows that it’s happening as quickly as models predicted.
The scientists used satellites to study the area and say Greenland’s ice losses now double in volume every decade.
The research shows that since 1992, Greenland’s ice melt has raised sea level by about 1 centimeter. That may not sound like much, but that has already affected 6 million people worldwide. According to the United Nations, by 2100, Greenland’s ice losses will raise the oceans another 16 centimeters, or more than 6 inches. And that’s just from Greenland’s ice melt. Antarctica is also melting and because of its larger ice mass has even greater potential to add to sea level rise.
The results, from a scientific group called the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE), were published Tuesday in the journal Nature.
You can read more about it in this Washington Post story, too.
