When you purchase by way of hyperlinks on our articles, Future and its syndication companions might earn a fee.
Credit: Paul Souders through Getty Images
A disturbing new video reveals 13 years of soften on the Greenland Ice Sheet. The video was stitched collectively primarily based on NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) satellite tv for pc knowledge.
The video reveals how the sides of the ice sheet are melting extra quickly than the middle, notably at spots the place glaciers move into the ocean. The new analysis finds that between 2010 and 2023, Greenland misplaced 563 cubic miles (2,347 cubic kilometers) of ice, which is sufficient to fill Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake. The Greenland Ice Sheet has been shedding mass since 1998, in line with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and it is at the moment the second-biggest contributor to sea degree rise after the enlargement of water that happens as a result of warming temperatures.
The analysis, revealed Dec. 20 within the journal Geophysical Research Letters, wasn’t nearly quantifying ice loss, although. Both NASA and ESA have satellites preserving a detailed eye on the area. ESA’s CryoSat-2 makes use of radar to measure the peak of Earth’s floor, whereas NASA’s ICESat-2 makes use of laser measurements. Both strategies have professionals and cons, and researchers wished to make certain the 2 measurements returned related outcomes and might be mixed for higher accuracy.
The outcomes confirmed that they’ll: CryoSat-2 and ICESat-2 differed by not more than 3% of their estimates of the elevation change on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Their joint outcomes revealed that the ice sheet thinned by a mean of three.9 ft (1.2 meters) over 13 years.
But that common quantity obscures main variations throughout the sheet. The ice sheet’s edges misplaced 21 ft (6.4 m), on common. Outlet glaciers noticed the worst loss, with a most of 246 ft (75 m) on the Zachariae Isstrøm glacier. The worst losses seem within the darkest purple within the new video made out of the info.
RELATED STORIES
— NASA plane uncovers website of secret Cold War nuclear missile tunnels underneath Greenland ice sheet
— Fossils from Greenland’s icy coronary heart reveal it was a inexperienced tundra lined in flowers lower than 1 million years in the past
— Giant viruses found dwelling in Greenland’s darkish ice and purple
Since 2020, CryoSat-2 and ICESat-2 have been orbiting alongside the identical paths — a joint effort between ESA and NASA to ensure the info collected by each satellites may be simultaneous and synchronized.
“It is nice to see that the info from ‘sister missions’ are offering a constant image of the adjustments happening in Greenland,” Thorsten Markus, venture scientist for the ICESat-2 mission at NASA, stated in a assertion. “Understanding the similarities and variations between radar and lidar ice sheet top measurements permits us to totally exploit the complementary nature of these satellite tv for pc missions.”
