Climate change: Greenland ice sheet melts under record warmth

Climate scientists monitoring Greenland’s vast ice sheet say they had to check if their models were working properly.

FILE - In this July 21, 2011 file photo, an iceberg floats in the sea near Qeqertarsuaq, Disko Island, Greenland. Global warming is shifting the way the Earth wobbles on its polar axis, a new NASA study finds. Melting ice sheets, especially in Greenland, are changing the distribution of weight on Earth. And that has caused both the North Pole and the wobble, which is called polar motion, to change course, according to a study published Friday, April 8, 2016, in the journal Science Advances. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

The seasonal melting of Greenland’s vast ice sheet reached record levels this week, data from the Danish Meteorological Institute shows.

“We had to check that our models were still working properly,” climate scientist Peter Langen told the agency’s Polar Portal website.

On Monday, about 12 per cent of the ice sheet was melting, almost one month earlier than the previous top three dates for when more than 10 per cent of the ice had begun to melt.

Temperatures this month at some weather stations on the ice reached 10C. A station 1840m above sea level on the ice sheet in southwestern Greenland reached a high of 3.1C.

“This would be a warm day in July, never mind April,” said Robert Fausto, a scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark.

The warm weather also affected regions outside the ice sheet: on Greenland’s west coast, the mercury reached 17.8C, one of the highest April temperatures in Greenland since records began in 1873.

Rain and meltwater at this time of the year typically runs back into the snow and freezes again, but by warming the snow further down it reduces the amount of heating needed to prompt the melting to start again later in the season, DMI said.

The Greenland ice sheet, a potentially massive contributor to rising sea levels, lost mass twice as fast between 2003 and 2010 as during the entire 20th century, researchers said in December.

Greenland ice loss contributed to a global average sea level rise of 25mm between 1990 and 2010 — mainly from surface melt, said the research, published in the journal Nature.

AFP