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Greenland Temps Soar 40 Degrees Above Normal, Record Melting of Ice Sheet
The annual Arctic thaw has kicked off with record-setting ice melt and sea ice loss that is several weeks ahead of schedule, scientists said, as the New York Times reported.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, there is open water in areas north of Alaska where it is rarely, if ever, seen, the Washington Post reported.
The accelerated ice melt in Greenland was caused by an usual weather pattern, where high-pressure air lingered, bringing warm air up from the south, which pushed the mercury 40 degrees Fahrenheit above normal temperatures. Add to that continuously cloudless skies and snowfall that is well below normal, and the conditions were ripe for melting across most of the ice sheet.
Last week, Greenland lost 2 billion tons of ice or about 45 percent of the surface in just one day. Measuring about 275,000 square miles, the ice melt was slightly larger than Texas, said Marco Tedesco, a geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, according to the New York Times.
While the high temperatures set a record early date for such widespread melting, there was slightly greater melting in 2012, but a bit later in June. That year, high pressure returned during the summer months, which caused record ice-sheet melt. Greenland lost 200 billion tons of ice that summer, the New York Times reported. But, so much melting this early in summer could be ominous, putting 2019 on pace to set a new record for ice loss, according to CNN.
"The melting is big and early," said Jason Box, a climatologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, as the Washington Post reported. In May, Box predicted that 2019 would be a big melt year for Greenland, as CNN reported.
His prediction was based on the lower than average snow cover in Western Greenland and the melt days that began in April, which is unusually early. The melt season also started three weeks earlier than average and earlier than the record-setting year of 2012, according to CNN.
The thin snow cover that fell this winter melts quickly, which exposes old snow and ice. The older snow absorbs more sunlight and, therefore, accelerates melting, according to the New York Times.
"These pulses of melting really change the face of the snow," Tedesco said, as the New York Times reported. "It can make the snow melt faster and faster."
While the fast melting is jarring, it will not contribute to sea level rise immediately since most of the water stays near the ice sheet and has the potential to refreeze. Only as the warm season continues does the water drain down through the ice and out into the ocean, according to the New York Times. Then the sea level will start to rise.
"Greenland has been an increasing contributor to global sea level rise over the past two decades," said Thomas Mote, a scientist at the University of Georgia who studies Greenland's climate, as CNN reported. "And surface melting and runoff is a large portion of that."
The current melting, while unusual and alarming, has precedent. Mote pointed to 2012, 2010 and 2007 as notable melt years that were once unthinkable, but now might be the new normal.
"We've seen a sequence of these large melt seasons, starting in 2007, that would have been unprecedented earlier in the record," he said, as CNN reported. "We didn't see anything like this prior to the late 1990s."
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The world awakened to the hole in the ozone layer in 1985, which scientists attributed it to ozone depleting substances. Two years later, in Montreal, the world agreed to ban the halogen compounds causing the massive hole over Antarctica. Research now shows that those chemicals didn't just cut a hole in the ozone layer, they also warmed up the Arctic.
Formosa Plant May Still Be Releasing Plastic Pollution in Texas After $50M Settlement, Activists Find
On the afternoon of Jan. 15, activist Diane Wilson kicked off a San Antonio Estuary Waterkeeper meeting on the side of the road across from a Formosa plastics manufacturing plant in Point Comfort, Texas.
After Wilson and the waterkeeper successfully sued Formosa in 2017, the company agreed to no longer release even one of the tiny plastic pellets known as nurdles into the region's waterways. The group of volunteers had assembled that day to check whether the plant was still discharging these raw materials of plastics manufacturing.
Malaysia Sends Plastic Waste Back to 13 Wealthy Countries, Says It Won’t Be 'the Rubbish Dump of the World'
The Southeast Asian country Malaysia has sent 150 shipping containers packed with plastic waste back to 13 wealthy countries, putting the world on notice that it will not be the world's garbage dump, as CNN reported. The countries receiving their trash back include the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Canada.
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Davos 2020: Trump Dismisses Environmental Concerns as 'Pessimism' at Climate-Focused WEF
U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed the concerns of environmental activists as "pessimism" in a speech to political and business leaders at the start of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Tuesday.