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The researchers’ forecasts are grim: Even if global warming is kept in check, there is no turning back for sea level rise in the 21st century.
According to a new study, published in the journal Nature, the enormous Greenland ice sheet is expected to lose around 36 trillion tons of its mass if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. It will cause global sea level to rise four inches to 2100, writes AFP.
Researcher: “It doesn’t matter”
– No matter how great future carbon dioxide emissions are, the Greenland ice sheet will lose more ice this century than even during the hottest times of the past 12,000 years, says Jason Briner, lead author of the study and professor of geology. . at the University of Buffalo in New York, to the news agency.
According to AFP, the study is the first to reconstruct how Greenland’s ice has decreased in mass during the current geological age, which began just over 11,000 years ago.
Greenland ice was in equilibrium
Until the late 1990s, the Greenland ice sheets were considered to be largely balanced. What they lost during the summer they got back when it snowed. But in recent decades, climate change has upset the balance, and it was previously reported that there is no longer a return to ice.
By 2050, some areas, which today are home to some 300 million people, are expected to be vulnerable to flooding.
The Greenland ice sheet is kilometers thick and, in total, so massive that it could raise sea level by seven meters.
