2023-11-10 23:34:32
A study published on Tuesday (7) shows that floating ice shelves located in northern Greenland have lost a third of their total volume in the last 40 years.
The melting of these floating glaciers will cause a “dramatic” rise in sea levels – potentially reaching 2.1 meters. Greenland’s glaciers are instrumental in regulating the flow of ice from local glaciers to the ocean.
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Free fall
Since 1978, the ice shelves in question have lost more than 35% of their total volume and three of them have collapsed, points out the UOL;The study, published in Nature Communicationsalso indicates that global warming, fueled by fossil fuels, makes ice caps “extremely vulnerable”, and could even collapse; “This could have dramatic consequences in terms of rising sea levels”, reinforce the authors.
Sea level rise
The rise in sea levels does not happen exactly due to the melting of glaciers, as they are in the water.
The ice shelves function as if they were a “dam” regulating the discharge of ice into the ocean from the ice sheet. Once the barriers collapse, they will allow more ice to be dumped into the oceans.
Previously, scientists considered them stable, while other parts of the Greenland ice sheet began to weaken in the 1980s. The research authors, however, discovered that the glaciers began to discharge ice due to the weakening of the shelves, which have been melting in its lower part due to the warming of the oceans.
We have identified a very significant increase in melt since the 2000s, which clearly corresponds to growth in ocean temperatures in this area during that period.
Romain Millan, researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, in French) and main author of the study, in an interview with AFP
The scientists linked to the study are from Denmark, France and the USA. They used thousands of satellite images combined with field measurements and climate models to reconstruct the nature of floating glaciers.
Destabilization of northern Greenland’s glaciers began over the past 20 years, indicating more ice loss than gain. According to observations carried out between 2006 and 2018, the Greenland ice sheet accounts for 17% of sea level rise.
To make matters worse, another study points out that the melting of glaciers can increase the chance of earthquakes around the world.
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