A new study shows that rising temperatures and increased pollution could melt the Greenland ice sheet almost entirely over the next 1,000 years.
What's happening?
This high-emission scenario would lead to a nearly 7.4-meter (24.3-foot) rise in global sea levels, as Frans Steenhoudt of the Free University of Brussels explained. The study was published in The Cryosphere.
Steenhoudt noted the sheet has been losing mass at an accelerated rate since the 1990s because of surface melt and ice calving, just some of the consequences of rising global temperatures caused by humans' burning of gas, coal, and oil for energy.
The study paired a Greenland ice sheet model with a regional climate model to predict the effects of significant pollution and warming in the polar region over the next 300 years. After that, the climate remained steady until the end of the millennium to evaluate interactions between the ice sheet and atmosphere, including wind and precipitation.
"This allowed the team, for the first time, to investigate in detail the role of amplifying feedback mechanisms between the ice sheet and the atmosphere over very long timescales," Steenhoudt wrote.
Why is this important?
As the ice sheet thinned, it melted faster, and that also turned snow to rain. Precipitation decreased, and cloud cover increased. The various inputs accelerated ice mass loss, and by the year 3000, the sheet was all but completely melted.
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Different wind patterns could create different results, including mitigating melting if cold air rather than warm air is pushed to the fringes.
"We find that the feedbacks between the ice sheet and the atmosphere ultimately become so strong that, under a high-warming scenario, the ice sheet largely loses its stability," lead author Chloë Paice said. "Simulations that do not include these interactions significantly underestimate the total mass loss."
What's being done to prevent the ice melt?
Scientific studies are vital to monitoring the Greenland ice sheet, which is one of only two on Earth with the Antarctic ice sheet. Together, they hold 99% of the planet's land ice and 68% of its freshwater.
Their melting is already raising sea levels, and other studies have documented the many processes that are accelerating ice mass loss in Greenland. The sheet is thinning, crevasses are expanding, and new discoveries are being made, such as a subglacial lake eruption.
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"The study highlights the importance of explicitly including ice-sheet-atmosphere feedbacks in long-term sea-level rise projections," Steenhoudt said. "It demonstrates that high-resolution regional climate models are crucial for accurately representing these processes."
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