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Greenland ’s gigantic ice sheet is inch toward an irreversible tipping point , after which it will latch on into the sea , a young survey warn .
Just 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit ( 2 degree Celsius ) of further warming could be enough to trigger a prostration of the world ’s secondly - largest ice sheet , causing ocean levels to rise by 23 feet ( 7 meters ) and sow havoc across spherical ecosystems .
The Ilulissat Icefjord in Greenland on July 3, 2024. The glacier is calving enough ice daily to meet New York City’s water needs for an entire year.
scientist have long observed the accelerating decline of Greenland ’s shabu screening — with the sheet lose anestimated 33 million tons(30 million metric tons ) of ice-skating rink every hour . But researcher were n’t certain exactly when the ice sheet could come in a terminal death spiral . Now , a raw study publish Jan. 9 in the journalThe Cryospherehas revealed that , if theworst warming estimatescome rightful , this irreversible tipping point could come by the turn of the hundred .
Freshwater reserves under threat
Greenland ’s ice sheet is one of only two permanent ice sheets onEarth , the other being theAntarctic trash piece of paper . It is nearly three times the sizing of Texas , covering roughly 656,000 square stat mi ( 1.7 million square kilometers ) , according to theNational Snow and Ice Data Center(NSIDC ) in Colorado .
Related : Fossils from Greenland ’s icy heart break it was a unripened tundra covered in flowers less than 1 million old age ago
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets make up more than 70 % of Earth ’s fresh water reserves , allot to theNSIDC . Both have been losing mass at an accelerated rate due to human - causedclimate variety , and the canvas have lost a combined 6.9 trillion tons ( 6.3 trillion measured heaps ) of ice since 1994 , according to a2021 subject .
Yet despite these significant losses , the integrality of the tack has yet to enter a country where irreversible collapse is inevitable , according to scientist , especially if drastic cut to carbon discharge are made in meter .
To judge when a tipping point for Greenland ’s Methedrine sheet could arrive , the investigator designed a mood model that simulated the time to come of the ice rag ’s surface plenty proportionality — meaning the dispute between nose candy buildup and loss due to melting — in different thawing conditions .
The model ’s issue were chill , finding that a tipping point for the mainsheet will be hit when close to 230 gigatons ( 253.5 billion lots ) of ice is lose in a single year — a 60 % decrease from the ice shroud ’s pre - industrial equilibrium .
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This scenario is tie to a global temperature addition of 6.12 F ( 3.4 nose candy ) above pre - industrial degree . The planet iscurrently hoveringaround 2.65 F ( 1.47 C ) hotter in 2024 than in the late 19th century , but themost pessimistic projectionssuggest it could murder 3.4 nose candy of warming by 2100 under current plans .
If the sheet were to melt wholly , the accompany sea level rises would cause desolation for the billion who live along the humanity ’s coasts , and and this rise along with thawing temperature would have serious conditional relation forglobally vital Atlantic sea currents .
Greenland ’s trend of accelerated melting is also occurring in icy regions all over the world . Between 2000 and 2019 , Earth ’s glaciers lost an average of 294 billion tons ( 266 billion metric short ton ) of muckle per year , account for21 % of observed ocean - level upgrade across that metre period of time .
Another field of study print in 2021 estimate that Earth is lose enough ice every year to comprehend a frozen area thesize of Lake Superior .
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