Greenland, world’s largest island located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, has 3⁄4 of its surface area covered with a permanent ice sheet, which is under threat because of climate change. Last week Saturday for the first and foremost time on America’s National Science Foundation record, the summit of Greenland received rain and not snow, as temperatures at the spot went above freezing for the 3rd time in less than 10 years. The event has sparked fear as scientists are pointing thereto as evidence that Greenland is warming rapidly. As per the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, this was the heaviest rainfall that the ice sheet received since record-keeping began in 1950, with Sunday witnessing a rate of ice melting that was 7x more than the daily average that’s observed at this point of the year.

On 21 August, the facility of America’s national science foundation observed rain at the normally frigid summit, with the precipitation extending up to Greenland’s southeast coast. As per a press notification, the melting event that day covered 337,000 square miles (Greenland’s ice sheet is 656,000 square miles large), and for 3 days, the sheet received 7 billion tonnes of rain.
The rain, associated with warm conditions, caused a serious and heavy melting event at the summit, adding to concerns of rapid ice melting running off into the ocean in volumes, thus accelerating global sea-level rise.

Our Expression

Greenland, which is 2/3 the dimensions of India, had already witnessed one of its rare and most severe melting events of the past decade last month when it lost 8.5 billion tons of surface mass in one day– the third such extreme event within the past decade.
Suitable and sustainable measures have to be adopted immediately to tackle this problem. Along we reducing the ongoing burning of fossil fuels, afforestation and ocean water de-acidification have to be encouraged. Air activities over Greenland have to be completely discouraged with minimum human intervention, these activities will let Greenland rehabilitate.

– By Astitva Singh