• Climate emergency Hundreds of protesters call for Boris Johnson to take action with 100 days to go to the Glasgow Climate Summit

  • Environment Storms, floods, droughts and heat waves: water, the protagonist of the disasters with the most deaths and losses in 50 years

  • Opinion How does the EU legislative package against climate change affect Spain?

A heat wave in Greenland, with temperatures more than 10 degrees above seasonal normals,

this week triggered a "massive" melting episode of the Greenland ice cap

, glaciologists warned.

Since Wednesday, the ice cap that covers the vast Arctic territory

has melted some 8 billion tonnes every day

, twice the average rate during the summer period, according to data from Polar Portal, a modeling tool run by Danish research institutes. .

According to the Danish meteorological institute DMI,

unusual temperatures of more than 20 degrees

have been recorded in northern Greenland in recent days

, with local records.

At the small

Nerlerit Inaat

airport

in northeastern Greenland, mercury reached 23.4 degrees Celsius on Thursday,

the highest level since the weather station began records

and higher than the maximum temperature recorded in Denmark that day.

8 billion liters of fresh water

This heat wave, which has also affected much of the vast Arctic territory, has accelerated the rate of melting of the ice cap.

By way of comparison, the immense volume of water melted every day in recent days - 8 billion liters of fresh water -

"would be enough to cover the entire surface of Florida with two inches of water,

" says Polar Portal.

Greenland's daily thaw record, which dates back to the summer of 2019, has not been broken, but the part of the territory where the ice melted

is higher than two years ago, the Arctic watch site said.

Second ice cap after Antarctica, with an area

of almost 1.8 million square kilometers

, the ice sheet that covers Greenland worries scientists because warming in the Arctic is three times faster than in the rest of the world .

Its decline, which began several decades ago,

has accelerated since 1990

.

10 centimeters of rise from the sea

According to a European study published in January, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet will

contribute to the general rise in sea level by 10 to 18 centimeters between now and 2100, which

is 60% faster than the previous estimate.

The Greenland ice sheet contains enough to

raise the oceans 6 to 7 meters.

Due to a relatively

cool

start to

summer with snowfall and rain

, the ice sheet retreat in 2021 is still at the historical average, according to Polar Portal.

The thaw period runs from June to early September.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Denmark

  • Climate change

  • Winter

  • Beaches

Well-beingThis is what you should do so that your hair does not spoil this summer with chlorine, sun and saltpeter

SaludPeñíscola asks that the incidence of Covid be calculated on the real population in tourist destinations

Stories Hunting for the great tuna in the last trap of the Mediterranean

See links of interest

  • Last News

  • Work calendar

  • Home THE WORLD TODAY

  • Master Investigation Journalism

  • Novak Djokovic - Pablo Carreño, live

  • Spain - Ivory Coast, live

  • Hungary - Spain, live