Experts said that Greenland lost over 2 billion tons of ice in one day last week, experts are calling this year as a year of ice loss.
The “Melt Season” is common and happens every year, but this year is pretty unusual as experts said that it is not normal for this amount of ice to be lost in the month of June.
Although the average melt season in Greenland happens from the months of June and ends in August, the melting rates hit the highest during the month of July.
Experts are currently comparing this year’s numbers to the numbers in 2012. CNN said that ice began to melt earlier than it did seven years ago.
This is not the only problem Greenland is facing this year, the snow cover is also lower than average. It is expected that ice melt this year will break the record of 2012.
During an interview with CNN, Thomas Mote, a research scientist at the University of Georgia who studies the climate of Greenland, explained how ice melt that happens early can speed up the ice loss in the upcoming months.
Thomas also explained how this happens, he said that white snow and ice reflect the rays of the sun away from it, with less ice, the heat of the sun will be absorbed by the ice more and will cause it to melt faster.
Thomas adds that these are ‘all signs seem to be pointing to a large melt season.’
He then said, “We’ve seen a sequence of these large melt seasons, starting in 2007, that would have been unprecedented earlier in the record. We didn’t see anything like this prior to the late 1990s.”
Another contributor to the fast ice melting in Greenland is consistent humidity and high-temperature air that is coming from the Central Atlantic.
Thomas Mote said, “We’ve had a blocking ridge that has been anchored over East Greenland throughout much of the spring, which led to some melting activity in April – and that pattern has persisted.”
Earlier this year, experts said that Everest could be out of ice by 2100, and this is all because of Climate Change.