Goodbye to the glaciers

The Greenland glacier covers an area of ​​1.7 million square kilometers. It is the second largest body of ice in the world after the Antarctic Ice Sheet. According to the latest models, 1,000 gigatons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere will completely melt the southern region of the ice sheet. Increasing emissions to 2,500 gigatons would result in the permanent destruction of nearly the entire ice sheet.

We’ve already released 500 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere since human activity began to have a noticeable impact on carbon emissions – so we’re halfway through losing most of the glacier.

The first tipping point is not far from today’s climatic conditions, so we are in danger of crossing it,
says Dennis Hoening, a climatologist at the Potsdam Climate Impact Research Institute in Germany.

The complex simulation used by the research team took into account all major climate processes and factors affecting ice melt, including air temperature, water temperature, ocean current activity and precipitation levels. These are difficult models to run because metrics are constantly changing.

The study suggests: Even reaching the warming level envisaged in the Paris climate agreement will not be enough to stop this process.After that, the Greenland glacier will not be able to fully recover.

A recent study showed that the ice in Greenland is melting faster than previously thought. Unfortunately, there are no signs of slowing down. This leads to sea level rise and a host of other problems. For example, the less ice cover, the less sunlight is reflected into space, which means that the temperature rise will accelerate even more.