Ice Melt makes Greenland Rise. Swiss Alps to Host 2025's Summer Olympics

Greenland is moving up at a pace of 1 inch per year. The ice is melting so fast that the island is rising noticeably as the weight is lifted.

Greenland used to be white

Even though the ice is 2km (1.2 miles) thick in some places, its formerly ubiquitous ice cap is shrinking at an alarming rate. The ice, in place for million of years, presses down the land, making the elevation at any given point lower than it would be without ice. With global temperatures rising and the frozen crust melting the island is now rebounding.

Greenland is not the only area affected by ice melt. The Alps and Mount Kilimanjaro have also registered dramatic changes during recent years.

Now, scientists at the University of Miami say Greenland’s ice is melting so quickly that the land underneath is rising at an accelerated pace.

In western Greenland, the uplift seems to have started in the late 1990′s. If current trends continue, that could accelerate to as much as 2 inches per year by 2025, said Tim Dixon, professor of geophysics at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) and principal investigator of the study.

“It’s been known for several years that climate change is contributing to the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet,” Dixon said in a statement. But don’t stop worrying yet.  According to Yan Jiang of the University of Miami, “Greenland’s ice melt is very important because it has a big impact on global sea-level rise”. Yet, there are some that still believe that Global Warming is a hoax. I’ll blame them the day we have to start commuting in canoes and using SCUBA diving gear to do our groceries. Plan B (providing that Al Gore can’t save the world), moving to Antarctica.

“What’s surprising, and a bit worrisome, is that the ice is melting so fast that we can actually see the land uplift in response. Even more surprising, the rise seems to be accelerating, implying that melting is accelerating”, Mr. Dixon said.

Shimon Wdowinski, research associate professor in the University of Miami RSMAS, and co-author of the study reports that their study is consistent with a number of global warming indicators, confirming that ice melt and sea-level rise are real and becoming significant.”

Can Global Warming be stopped? John Walsh, director of the Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks is not very hopeful: “In the short term, I’m not sure that anyone can stop it”.

Just in case, I’ll start booking a one way trip to the white continent.

Tweet with me @ftarnogol

Image credit, International Space Station (how cool is that)

Article by Fernando

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