This feat would have been amazing if not for its environmental implications. For the very first time (in recorded history), it has rained at the summit of Greenland’s ice sheet. This was most likely caused due to the massive heat waves that the country has been experiencing, with temperatures at the glacier’s summit rising above the freezing point:
"There is no previous report of rainfall at this location, which reaches 3,216 meters (10,551 feet) in elevation," NSIDC reported, noting the amount of ice lost in one day was seven times more than the daily average for this time of year.
On August 14, 2021, temperatures rose above freezing on the summit of Greenland, fueling a rain event that dumped 7 billion tons of water—the heaviest since records began in 1950. pic.twitter.com/EyTDhS80f5
— National Snow and Ice Data Center (@NSIDC) August 18, 2021
"Greenland, like the rest of the world, is changing," University of Colorado Boulder glaciologist Ted Scambos told The Washington Post. "We now see three melting events in a decade in Greenland - and before 1990, that happened about once every 150 years. And now rainfall: in an area where rain never fell."
"Like the heat wave in the [US Pacific] northwest, it's something that's hard to imagine without the influence of global climate change."
Image credit: Annie Spratt
Newest 2 Comments
If it hadn't rained in Greenland in 1933 and 1950, I'd be amazed. Apparently, 70 years is "recorded history" now. A report from the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in 1975 (https://erdc-library.erdc.dren.mil/jspui/bitstream/11681/11728/1/SR-216.pdf) notes "Hogue also notes that in the Centrale-Eismitte area, drizzle and rain were each reported once in a three-year period, on 20 and 21 June 1950, respectively". CNN itself is hypocritical on the issue, the headline blaring "Rain fell at the normally snowy summit of Greenland for the first time on record", then in the article stating "It was the heaviest rainfall on the ice sheet since record keeping began in 1950"; using "first time on record" in the headline and then contradicting themselves in the article suggests that CNN's intent is to whip up fear about climate change, not report news. And with the paucity of sensor stations on Greenland, it is entirely possible that there have been more that have gone unnoticed and unrecorded.
Abusive comment hidden.
(Show it anyway.)
das amazin
Abusive comment hidden.
(Show it anyway.)