Rising temperatures have melted ice faster than ever in the coldest regions of the world. A new study found that Greenland lost 600 billion tons of ice in the summer of 2019 alone, increasing the global sea level by 2.2 mm in just two months. The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, analyzed data from Gravity Recovery and NASA. Climatic Experiment. The researchers said the findings should help guide efforts to address the effects of climate change. The Arctic experienced its hottest year on record in 2019, The Guardian reported. Abnormally high temperatures cause greater and faster ice loss in the region, contributing to sea level rise and putting many coastal cities and towns around the world at risk of flooding. Greenland lost an average of 268 billion tons of ice between 2002 and 2019. That figure was less than half of what was lost last summer due to significantly high temperatures. “We knew that last summer had been particularly warm in Greenland, melting every corner of the ice cap, but the numbers are enormous,” said Isabella Velicogna, lead author of the study and professor of earth system science at the University of California at Irvine. The latest data also indicates that Greenland has already been losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s. The rise also causes a faster rise in the global sea level and puts 400 million people at risk of flooding each year to end of the century.
Antarctica faces the same problem due to global warming. But the researchers said winter has been helping to reduce the effects of extreme temperatures on Earth’s largest ice sheet.
“In Antarctica, the loss of mass in the west continues unabated, which is very bad news for rising sea levels,” said Velicogna. “But we also see a mass gain in the Atlantic sector of East Antarctica caused by increased snowfall, which helps mitigate the huge increase in mass loss that we have seen in the past two decades in other parts of the continent. ” The researchers expect government leaders to continue efforts to tackle climate change amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The growing health problem caused by the new coronavirus has delayed climate talks scheduled for 2020. The village of Ilulissat is seen near the icebergs that parted ways with the Jakobshavn glacier on July 24, 2013 in Ilulissat, Greenland. Joe Raedle / Getty Images. [TagsToTranslate] climate change
