The Greenland ice sheet is rapidly shrinking at a rate of 10 billion tons per year since 2003. Furthermore, researchers described it as the greatest ice loss in history which may lead to a rise on global sea levels.
According to the National Snow & Ice Data Center, the Greenland ice sheets, along with the Antarctic ice sheets, hold 99 percent of freshwater ice on Earth. The Greenland ice sheet extends about 1.7 million square kilometers which is about three times the size of Texas.
Scientists have predicted before that if the Greenland ice sheet melts, the sea level would rise by about 6 meters, or 20 feet. Ice sheets are also important because it influences climate and weather. However, the Greenland ice sheet has begun to decline.
Researchers from the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark, led by climate scientist Shfaqat Abbas Khan, studied the Zachariae glacier to measure the melting rate of the Greenland ice sheet. This large glacier is located in northeast Greenland and was measured to be 91,780 square kilometers as of 1996. However, the researchers were surprised to find that this glacier has declined significantly by 20 kilometers since 2003 compared to the southwestern glacier Jakobshavn which lost only 35 kilometers since the mid-1800s.
"My guess is this is a new record for Greenland. This was very surprising because we don't expect huge ice loss in northeast Greenland, "Khan said to LiveScience.
"Suddenly we have a new area which will most likely be faster than Jakobshavn in the future," he added.
The research team used satellite data, aerial images, GPS, and radar instruments to monitor the changes of Zachariae glacier. They noted that all three glaciers located in Greenland were actually melting but Zachariae is the fastest. It continues to drain 16 percent of the Greenland ice sheet which they believed was caused by the warm air temperatures on that area.
At this fast melting rate, scientists projected a global sea level rise of between 11 and 38 inches by 2100.
"Greenland is very complex and it's very, very difficult to predict what will happen in the future," Khan said to LiveScience. "This also means our future estimates of sea level rise are also difficult to predict."
This study was published in the March 16 issue of Nature Climate Change.
