In the new study, published in Nature Climate Change, glaciologists found that regardless of any future fossil fuel pollution, warming to date will cause the Greenland ice sheet to shed 3.3 percent of its volume, committing 27.4 centimetres to sea level rise
Icebergs float in the Baffin Bay near Pituffik, Greenland on July 20, 2022 as captured during an airborne NASA mission along with Univesity of Texas scientists to measure melting Arctic sea ice. Image: Kerem Y¸cel / AFP
Paris, France: Even without any future global warming, Greenland's melting ice sheet will cause major sea level rise, with potentially "ominous" implications over this century as temperatures continue to rise, according to a study published Monday.
Rising sea levels—pushed up mainly by melting ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica—
are set to redraw the map over centuries and could eventually swamp land currently home to hundreds of millions of people, depending on humanity's efforts to halt warming.
The Greenland ice sheet is currently the main factor in swelling the Earth's oceans, according to NASA, with the Arctic region heating at a faster rate than the rest of the planet.
In the new study, published in Nature Climate Change, glaciologists found that regardless of any future fossil fuel pollution, warming to date will cause the Greenland ice sheet to shed 3.3 percent of its volume, committing 27.4 centimetres to sea level rise.