Greenland Lost More Than 2 Billion Tons Of Ice In Just A Single Day

A photograph emerged of sled dogs wading through water in Greenland recently and it shows a rather terrifying fate which may be in store.

Scientists, Steffen Olsen from the Danish Meteorological Institute was on route to collect weather monitoring tools when he stumbled upon a “lake’ where flat white sea ice once laid.

He caught the seven dogs in ankle deep water in a rather emotional photograph which will stick with us all for a rather long time.

The temperature in the area was roughly 40 degrees above the average in the area and that’s frightening.

CNN reported that in the period when the picture was captured (13 June), 2 BILLION tons of ice had melted away.

DMI's klimaforsker @SteffenMalskaer er i disse dage NV-Grønland for i samarbejde med lokale fangere at hente vejr- og havmålere, og endte med at dokumentere ekstreme forhold på en usædvanlig varm dag, hvor smeltevandet bogstaveligt talt flød på isen. pic.twitter.com/vmYBxyhiWr

— DMI (@dmidk) June 17, 2019

Ruth Mottram, climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute, told The Guardian:

“This year the expedition to retrieve the instruments – by dog-sled, still the most practical way to get around in this region at this time of year – ran into a lot of standing water on the sea ice.

The ice here forms pretty reliably every winter and is very thick, which means that there are relatively few fractures for melt water to drain through. Last week saw the onset of very warm conditions in Greenland and in fact much of the rest of the Arctic, driven by warmer air moving up from the south.”

Its already been predicted by scientists that this year will be a record high for the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet.

More than two billion tons of ice has melted in Greenland. Credit: PA

Thomas Mote from the University of Georgia has been studying Greenland’s climate and reported to CNN that previous melting periods occurred in 2007, 2010 and 2012.

“we didn’t see anything like this prior to the late 1990s.”

He added:

“Greenland has been an increasing contributor to global sea level rise over the past two decades and surface melting and runoff is a large portion of that.”