Ice melt in Greenland has reached the point of no return
Environment — di Elisabetta Scuri
Even if we limit the rise in temperatures, the ice in Greenland will not stop melting. This is revealed by a team of researchers.
Ice melt in Greenland has reached the point of no return
Even if we limit the rise in temperatures, the ice in Greenland will not stop melting. This is revealed by a team of researchers.
"If we take an ice cube out of the freezer and let it melt, to save what remains we will need to put it back in the freezer."
This statement by Renato Colucci, a glaciologist at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council (Ismar – Cnr), perfectly explains why the melting of the ice in Greenland has reached the point of no return — meaning the ice will continue to melt even if average global temperatures remain unchanged, ceasing to rise due to global warming.
Why Greenland has reached the point of no return
The unwelcome news was delivered by researchers at Ohio State University, in the United States, who published their study in the scientific journal Nature communications Earth & environment. By examining thirty years of observations of the ice sheet, they concluded that on the island — an autonomous Danish territory situated between the North Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic Ocean — the balance that, until the 1990s, saw accumulated snow compensate for the amount of melted ice has been broken.
Greenland's ice sheet has passed the point of no return, study says. The study, published in the British journal, 'Communications Earth & Environment.' It suggests that even if the effects of climate change were to reverse today, Greenland's glaciers would continue to melt.
"Winter snowfall is unable to counteract the melting of the ice sheet," explains Michaela King, one of the study's authors. "The glaciers have shrunk enough that many of them now sit in deeper water, which means the amount of ice in contact with water has increased, further facilitating melting and making a return to previous conditions even more difficult."
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Greenland, the consequences of last year's high pressure
Unfortunately, all of this is due to the fact that the Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth. In 2019, one million tonnes of ice melted per minute, most of it in July, for a total of 532 billion tonnes. A historic record, which surpasses the previous one by 15 per cent, set in 2012. It is as though the equivalent of seven Olympic swimming pools were pouring into the sea every second. If all the ice in Greenland were to melt, the result would be a rise in sea levels of six metres.
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The scientists' warning
Rather than panicking, however, we must make the most of the information available to us. "It is always positive to learn more about glacial environments, since we can only improve our predictions about how quickly the situation will change in the future. And this can only help us with adaptation and mitigation strategies. If we understand these dynamics, we can be prepared," concludes King. It is best not to waste any more time, then — to listen to scientists and follow their advice in order to preserve every single fragment of the Planet that we can still jealously safeguard.