”NASA scientists spot troubling, extreme melting in Greenland from a plane Serious warming. Serious sea level rise”
By Mark Kaufman on August 26, 2021
(Above are the headlines and details of an article published overnight on mashable.com and republished just now by google . Excerpts from the article follow.)
”NASA scientist Josh Willis flew over Greenland this week, and gazed at a sprawling polar world of melted ice and dark pools of water. In mid-August, a potent heat wave melted large swathes of the Greenland ice sheet, which is three times the size of Texas.
“It's a vivid sign of changing times, and climes. In recent decades, Arctic scientists have observed record-breaking melt events in Greenland, which result in water pouring into the sea — and contribute to sea level rise. So far in 2021, the island's melted area (8.2 million square miles) is way above the 1981 to 2010 average-to-date, by some 1 million square miles. …
“”What’s important to know is that all the big melt years have happened in the last two decades or so," Willis, who researches ice sheets and oceans at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Mashable between Greenland flights. "That’s because the melt in Greenland is getting more extreme with every decade due to human interference with the climate."
”Arctic scientists have found that, over the last couple decades, Greenland is melting faster than it has in at least 350 years. The ice sheet is shrinking.
”As the climate warms, and heat waves become increasingly extreme, major melting events are even happening at the island's typically frigid summit.
“This summer, a couple of serious heat waves hit Greenland, noted Ted Scambos, an ice sheet expert at the University of Boulder Colorado who has no involvement with the NASA mission. It even rained atop Greenland, at 10,551 feet. Scientists had never observed rain there before. ….
“Climate change is about trends, and Greenland's continued pattern of more frequent large-scale melting is representative of extremes becoming more extreme as the planet continues warming. Greenland's accelerating ice loss is similar to more severe deluges, more intense droughts, and an increase in the frequency and extent of severe, inferno-like wildfires.‘“
