Greenland’s ice has melted to a point of no return, and efforts to slow global warming will not save it from collapsing, according to a new study by Ohio State University researchers, CNN reported.
“Even if we had restored the climate to what it was 20 or 30 years ago, we would still be losing ice fairly quickly,” said one of the study’s authors, Professor Jan Howat.
The Greenland ice sheet loses more than 280 billion metric tons of melting ice a year, which is the single largest contribution to global sea level rise, said study lead author Michaela King.
She said the ice loss in recent years was so great that it led to measurable changes in the gravitational field over Greenland.
The melting of the Greenland ice sheet is contributing more than a millimeter to sea level rise each year and is likely to worsen further.
The authors found that after 2000, the ice surface shrank so rapidly that snowfall could not make up for lost ice even if the climate changed.
