Greenland is losing more ice than we thought. Here’s what it means for our oceans.
The Greenland ice sheet has lost 20 percent more ice than scientists previously thought, posing potential problems for ocean circulation patterns and sea level rise, according to a new study. Researchers had previously estimated that the Greenland ice sheet lost about 5,000 gigatons of ice in recent decades, enough to cover Texas in a sheet 26 feet high. The new estimate adds 1,000 gigatons to that period, the equivalent of piling about five more feet of ice on top of that fictitious Texas-sized sheet.
Most striking, nearly every glacier was shrinking — and in every corner of the ice sheet. “This is a signal that’s touching every part of Greenland,” said Chad Greene, the study’s lead author and a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “There’s basically no part of Greenland that’s safe from climate change.”
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