China News Service, Beijing, October 1 (Reporter Sun Zifa) As the Arctic warms, the mass loss of the Greenland ice sheet has been driving sea level rise, and its mass loss rate has increased significantly since the 1990s.

The internationally renowned academic journal "Nature" recently published a climate research paper that stated that the mass loss of the Greenland ice sheet in this century is expected to exceed any period in the past 12,000 years.

  The simulation of the research paper is based on a high carbon emission scenario, covering southwest Greenland.

The results of its research add to the evidence that carbon emissions must be reduced to reduce sea level rise caused by the Greenland ice sheet.

  Only by understanding the past quality changes of the Greenland Ice Sheet can we determine whether the current loss rate and the predicted future loss rate will exceed expectations, and whether it is related to natural variability.

The edge of the Greenland ice sheet.

Photo by Jason Briner

  The corresponding author of the paper and the State University of New York at Buffalo (Jason Briner) and colleagues based on the results of geological observations of Southwest Greenland, created a high Resolution simulation.

The simulation shows that the mass loss rate of the Greenland ice sheet in the 21st century will exceed the highest level in the past 12,000 years.

  They found that the previous maximum mass loss rate (between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago) was about 6 trillion tons per century, which was about 61,000 per century in the first two decades of this century (2000-2018) The estimated loss rate of tons is very close.

However, the future loss rate is expected to exceed this maximum.

The mass loss in the next century is expected to be between 8.8 trillion and 35.9 trillion tons (based on the lowest and highest greenhouse gas emission scenarios, respectively).

  The author of the paper warns that the loss of ice cover in this century may offset the cumulative ice cover growth in 4000 years, and the mass loss rate exceeds the previous rate by about 4 times.

They concluded that unless the real world follows a low carbon emission scenario, the quality loss rate will reach an unprecedented level.

(Finish)