Greenland ice sheet melting peak over after persistently losing volume

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Xinhua, August 6, 2019
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COPENHAGEN, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- The persistent melt across Greenland ice sheet is over, after losing volume for dozens of days, according to monitor data.

The loss on Sunday was approximately 7.6 gigatonnes, with almost 8.5 gigatonnes on Saturday, much higher than the average daily loss of 4 gigatonnes, Polar Portal organization said on Monday.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reported the start of major melting event across the ice sheet in late July, with billions of tons of meltwater streaming into the Atlantic Ocean for the whole month.

According to Polar Portal, the peak of ice sheet melting was over, and more snow will start to accumulate than melt at surface in August.

Polar Portal updates the latest monitoring data provided by Danish Arctic research institutions on the condition of Greenland ice sheet and the sea ice.

The ice sheet suffered its biggest single-day volume loss on record on Thursday, as 12.5 billion tonnes of ice was lost to the ocean by surface melt alone, according to computer model estimates.

Polar Portal also reported another big melt day on July 31, as "56 percent of the ice sheet had at least one millimeter of melt at surface and more than ten billion tonnes of ice was lost to the ocean by surface melt alone."

According to NASA, the warm air that brought a heatwave to Europe provoked the melting across Greenland ice sheet. Enditem

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