Not only the ice at the North Pole, but also the huge ice caps on Greenland are melting faster than expected. Scientists warn in a new report that was published on Monday.
Not only the ice at the North Pole, but also the huge ice caps on Greenland are melting faster than expected. Scientists warn in a new report that was published on Monday.
According to The New York Times, they expect that the water that ends up in the sea will make an important contribution to the further rise of the sea level over the next two decades.
At the end of 2018, a report was published in which scientists found that because of the fast melting ice on the North Pole, 14,000 tons of water per second ended up in the sea.
The melting ice in the arctic region thus makes a greater contribution to rising sea levels than the ice on Antarctica, although this continent around the south pole of the earth contains much more ice.
Around both poles the speed with which the ice melts has increased rapidly in recent years.
More smaller glaciers have also started to melt
New figures on the development of the melting ice on Greenland show that in 2012 more than 400 billion liters of water ended up in the sea. This is four times the amount that ended up in this way in the sea in 2003.
The increase is due in part to the fact that small glaciers have also started to melt more inland. These ice caps were not counted in the past when it came to measurements regarding the melting ice.
The new report confirms what earlier reports already stated in 2018, namely that the rise in sea level and the rise in the temperature of the water in the polar region will have more impact on global warming than previously expected.
Due to the absence of ice, the Arctic area is getting warmer
If large amounts of primordial ice do not grow in the North Pole and Greenland and the country does not ‚cool down‘, it almost certainly means that the planet is warming up faster than scientists thought so far. The heat of the sun reflected by the thick layer of ice now ends up in the ocean water.
The scientists emphasize that this trend can only be halted if CO2 emissions are reduced very quickly throughout the world. The rising sea level is considered one of the clearest effects of global warming, and one of the greatest threats to humans.
The temperature on earth is expected to rise by at least 2 degrees over the coming decades. This means that the sea level rises so far that within this period the homes of between 32 and 80 million people are threatened.
