The consequences of rising sea levels are becoming more apparent every year. climatechange greenland icesheets
Even a small increase in sea levels have devastating impacts on coastal habitats such as destructive erosion, wetland flooding, aquifer and agricultural soil contamination with salt, and lost habitat for fish, birds, and plants.
Greenland’s ice sheet lost 532 billion tons of ice in 2019 alone, the most ice lost since records began in 1948.To put that number into perspective, 532 billion tons of ice is equal to 3.192 billion Blue Whales, the largest creature to have ever lived on earth. It was also reported that Greenland lost an annual average of 25 billion tons of ice during the 1990s. This figure has increased drastically since then with the current average annual loss of ice being 234 billion tons.
The accelerated ice melt in Greenland was caused by unusual weather patterns, where high-pressure air lingered, bringing warm air up from the region of the equator. This pushed the temperature up by 40 degrees Fahrenheit or 4.45 degrees Celsius above normal temperatures.These conditions coupled with frequently cloudless skies and below-average snowfall resulted in perfect conditions for melting across most of the Greenland ice sheet.
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