Coastal ice on Greenland will melt by 2100

Coastal ice on Greenland will melt by 2100

IANSUpdated: Thursday, May 30, 2019, 07:52 AM IST
article-image

New York : The glaciers and ice caps that dot the edges of the Greenland coast are not likely to recover from the melting they are experiencing now, new research has found. The study suggests that the melting of Greenland’s coastal ice will raise global sea level by about 1.5 inches by 2100.

It is bad news, but not immediate cause for panic, said one of the researchers Ian Howat, Associate Professor at Ohio State University in the US. The findings apply to the comparatively small amount of ice along the coast only, he explained—not the Greenland Ice Sheet, which is the second largest ice cache in the world.

Melting on the island passed a tipping point 20 years ago and smallest glaciers and ice caps on the coast are no longer able to regrow lost ice, the study said. The find is important because it reveals exactly why the most vulnerable parts of Greenland ice are melting so quickly – the deep snow layer that normally captures coastal meltwater was filled to capacity in 1997.

That layer of snow and meltwater has since frozen solid, so that all new meltwater flows over it and out to sea.

                –IANS

RECENT STORIES