It is a well-known fact that Greenland seriously suffers because of the climate changes. A recent research actually quantified how bad the damage is. A quite intriguing and really concerning satellite study was published in ‘Geophysical Research Letters’ journal. It suggests that the Greenland lost 1 trillion tons of its ice for the period 2011 and 2014. Most of the ice loss came from only five of the glaciers.
According to the scientists, all of these facts are quite concerning.
The information was gathered between 2011 and 2014. The scientists used measurements from the CryoSat-2 satellite. This machine was launched by the European Space Agency a few years ago - in 2010. It works through a type of measurement, called‘altimetry’. It includes measuring how much the surface of the island’s altitude changed over a certain period in a response to the changes in the ice mass.
By combining the satellite observation with scientific modeling the researchers discovered that the island lost ice mass at an average rate of approximately 269 billion tons per year for the period January 2011 - December 2014. For the whole period this makes about 1 trillion tons of ice mass loss.
Actually, big fluctuations in the measurements were noticed from one year to the next one.That was stated by the climate expert Edward Hanna from University of Sheffield. He was not a part of the team that made the new study but he considers these fluctuations one of the most notable findings of this research.
2012 Was Environmentally Dramatic
The greatest ice losses took place in 2012. Because of the unusually warm summer in that year, the ice loss reached more than 400 billion tons. In 2013, it was a little over 100 billion tons.
The general findings from the observations show that ice loss was definitely prevalent in the southwest parts. Still, losses were also observed in the cooler, northern parts of Greenland.
According to the scientists the solid 12 percent of the whole ice loss came from only a few glaciers which actually compose just less than 1 percent of the area of the ice sheet. All of those five glaciers flow outward and into the sea. That combination of the rising temperatures of both air and ocean is probably a key factor for the melting.
Among the five rapidly melting glaciers was the Jakobshavn one. This is a well-known location for the scientists and it is now connected with its recent massive losses of ice.
The results from the study sound quite logical having in mind the measurements of some other satellites. For example, data from the NASA’s GRACE satellites show that Greenland loses about 287 billions tons of ice each year.
Thus, the study confirms the scientific beliefs that Greenland is in a poor condition. And the techniques from this study will be probably used for forming climate models. Such models will help scientists make relatively precise predictions about what will happen with the Greenland’s ice sheet in the future.