Iran Press/ Europe: If global warming continues unabated, the surface of the Greenland ice sheet may start losing more mass than it gains every year by 2055, new research finds.
Glacial melt due to rising temperatures will be greater than snow accumulation within the next three decades under the worst-case emissions scenario, according to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Arctic Today reported.
The findings, which were based on cutting-edge climate models, confirm previous studies predicting ice sheet loss by the middle of the century.
However, if strong mitigation measures are taken to curb the rise of global temperatures, the ice sheet may not reach this negative threshold, the study found.
“We wanted to know, when does the surface melt actually increase to such levels that it can no longer be replenished by snowfall?” Leo van Kampenhout, one of the study’s authors and a climate modeler at Utrecht University, told ArcticToday.
“If you follow the high-warming scenario, then by the middle of the century this [surface mass balance] would become negative. And this would mean that if warming stays at that level or even increases, then there is no way the Greenland ice sheet will come back,” he said.
Up until now, mountain glaciers have been outsize contributors to glacial melt and sea-level rise, even though they account for only about 1 percent of the world’s land ice, said Gabriel Wolken, a glacier specialist with the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys and the lead author of the glaciers chapter in the 2020 Arctic Report Card.
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