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The water off the coast of Greenland appears calm, but the puddles accumulated on the region’s icebergs are a sign that a transformation is underway higher up in the ice sheet.
Several days of unusually warm weather in the area have caused rapid melting, made evident by rivers of meltwater flowing into the ocean. Temperatures have been about 10 degrees warmer than normal for this time of year, scientists told CNN.
The amount of ice that melted in Greenland between July 15 and 17 alone, 6 billion tons of water per day, would be enough to fill 7.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, according to data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. -‘s.
Last week’s melt is not normal, looking at 30- to 40-year climate averages, said Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado.
Every summer, scientists worry that they will see a repeat of the record melting that occurred in 2019, when 532 billion tons of ice melted into the sea. An unexpectedly hot spring and a July heat wave that year caused almost the entire surface of the ice to melt. As a result, global sea levels rose permanently by 1.5 millimeters.
Greenland holds enough ice that if it all melted it could raise sea levels by 7.5 meters worldwide.
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