Greenland’s Accelerated Ice Loss: Escalating Concerns Amidst the Deepening Climate Crisis
The mass of the Greenland ice sheet has rapidly declined in the last several years due to surface melting and iceberg calving previous studies has shown that nearly every glacier in Greenland has thinned or retreated over the past few decades leading to glacier acceleration. Now a new study has estimated that 20 % more of Greenland ice sheets has disappeared than previous estimates have predicted. This new research “Ubiquitous acceleration in Greenland Ice Sheet calving from 1985 to 2022” published in Nature journal shows that this could potentially threaten ocean currents tat regulate the sea level temperature. The paper aims to understand how calving-front retreat has affected the ice-mass balance of Greenland.
The researchers combined 236,328 manually derived and AI-derived observations of glacier terminus positions collected from 1985 to 2022 at a resolution of 120m. The new study showed that the Greenland ice sheet has lost nearly 5000 sq. km of ice since 1985.
The Impact of Melting Ice on Ocean Currents
In the North Atlantic, warm water heated from near the equator moves up north on the ocean’s surface. When it gets to colder areas, it cools down, becomes denser, and sinks to the deep ocean. From there, it travels back south. More warm water takes its place, cools, sinks, and the cycle goes on.
Now as the ice from the glaciers melts, it adds freshwater to the Arctic Ocean, which then moves into the North Atlantic. This extra freshwater makes the seawater less heavy or dense. Over the past few decades, this has made the North Atlantic less salty, and it’s also slowing down the ocean currents.
When water is less dense, it can’t sink and flow through the deep ocean as it normally would. This might mess up or even stop the usual pattern of ocean currents in that area. Scientists think that at the current rate of change, these currents could completely stop in the next few decades.
