“The ice sheet is now in this new dynamic state, where even if we could return to a climate that was more than what we had 20 or 30 years ago, we will still lose mass pretty quickly,” Ian Howat, co-author of the study and a professor at Ohio State University, said.
The Greenland Ice Sheet dumps more than 280 billion metric tons of melting ice into the ocean each year, making it the largest single contributor to global sea level rise, according to Michalea King, lead author of the Ohio study and researcher. State University.
The ice loss has been so massive in recent years, she said, that it has caused a measurable change in the gravitational field over Greenland.
Melting ice in Greenland carries more than a millimeter increase in sea level each year, and that is likely to decrease. Sea levels are rising by more than 3 feet by the end of the century, removing beaches and coastal properties.
Coastal states such as Florida, and low-lying island nations are particularly vulnerable. Just 3 feet of sea level rise could submerge large areas of the coastline. Forty percent of the U.S. population lives in coastal areas that are vulnerable to sea level rise.
“There are a lot of places, like especially in Florida, where one meter would only cover a lot of existing land areas,” King said. “And that’s confusing when you get storms and hurricanes and things like that, which then cause extra current on top of a higher baseline.”
The study also found that the ice sheet returns in rapid bursts, leading to a sudden and unpredictable rise in sea level, making it difficult to prepare for the effects.
The study used four decades of satellite data to measure changes in the Greenland ice sheet. The authors found that after 2000 the ice sheet shrank so rapidly that the addition of snowfall would not keep up with the rate of melting from parts of the glacier newly exposed to warmer ocean water, even if climate change were reversed.
Entire coasts of ice are disappearing at once due to climate change, Howat said, adding that all 200 glaciers that make up Greenland’s ice sheet have been observed in the same episode.
Even though the retreat of the Greenland Ice plate probably cannot be reversed, it is simply the first in a series of tip points. If climate change continues at this rate, the melting rate will be much slower.
“We have passed the point of no return, but there are obviously more to come,” Howat said. “Instead of being a single tipping point in which we went from a happy ice sheet to a rapidly collapsing ice sheet, it’s more a trap where we’ve fallen from the first step, but there are many more steps to the bullet. “
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