What’s going on with the

Greenland ice sheet?

It’s losing ice faster than forecast and now
irreversibly committed to at least 10
inches of sea level rise
I’m standing at the edge of the Greenland ice sheet, mesmerized by a mind-
blowing scene of natural destruction. A milewide section of glacier front has
fractured and is collapsing into the ocean, calving an immense iceberg.
Seracs, giant columns of ice the height of three-story houses, are being tossed
around like dice. And the previously submerged portion of this immense block
of glacier ice just breached the ocean – a frothing maelstrom flinging ice cubes
of several tons high into the air. The resulting tsunami inundates all in its path
as it radiates from the glacier’s calving front.
Fortunately, I’m watching from a clifftop a couple of miles away. But even here, I
can feel the seismic shocks through the ground.

What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet? 1

 A fast-flowing outlet glacier calves a ‘megaberg’ into Greenland’s Uummannaq Fjord. Alun
Hubbard

Despite the spectacle, I’m keenly aware that this spells yet more unwelcome
news for the world’s low-lying coastlines.
As a field glaciologist, I’ve worked on ice sheets for more than 30 years. In that
time, I have witnessed some gobsmacking changes. The past few years in
particular have been unnerving for the sheer rate and magnitude of change
underway. My revered textbooks taught me that ice sheets respond over
millennial time scales, but that’s not what we’re seeing today.

A study published Aug. 29, 2022, demonstrates – for the first time – that
Greenland’s ice sheet is now so out of balance with prevailing Arctic climate
that it no longer can sustain its current size. It is irreversibly committed to
retreat by at least 59,000 square kilometers (22,780 square miles), an area
considerably larger than Denmark, Greenland’s protectorate state.

Even if all the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming ceased today,
we find that Greenland’s ice loss under current temperatures will raise global
sea level by at least 10.8 inches (27.4 centimeters). That’s more than current
models forecast, and it’s a highly conservative estimate. If every year were like
2012, when Greenland experienced a heat wave, that irreversible commitment
to sea level rise would triple. That’s an ominous portent given that these are
climate conditions we have already seen, not a hypothetical future scenario.

What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet? 2

 Our study takes a completely new approach – it is based on observations and
glaciological theory rather than sophisticated numerical models. The current
generation of coupled climate and ice sheet models used to forecast future sea
level rise fail to capture the emerging processes that we see amplifying
Greenland’s ice loss.

How Greenland got to this point

The Greenland ice sheet is a massive, frozen reservoir that resembles an
inverted pudding bowl. The ice is in constant flux, flowing from the interior –
where it is over 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) thick, cold and snowy – to its edges,
where the ice melts or calves bergs.

In all, the ice sheet locks up enough fresh water to raise global sea level by 24
feet (7.4 meters).

https://vimeo.com/743951647

David Attenborough takes us on a virtuoso tour of the Greenland ice sheet.

Greenland’s terrestrial ice has existed for about 2.6 million years and has
expanded and contracted with two dozen or so “ice age” cycles lasting 70,000
or 100,000 years, punctuated by around 10,000-year warm interglacials. Each
glacial is driven by shifts in Earth’s orbit that modulate how much solar radiation
reaches the Earth’s surface. These variations are then reinforced by snow
reflectivity, or albedo; atmospheric greenhouse gases; and ocean circulation
that redistributes that heat around the planet.

We are currently enjoying an interglacial period – the Holocene. For the past
6,000 years Greenland, like the rest of the planet, has benefited from a mild and
stable climate with an ice sheet in equilibrium – until recently. Since 1990, as
the atmosphere and ocean have warmed under rapidly increasing greenhouse
gas emissions, Greenland’s mass balance has gone into the red. Ice losses due
to enhanced melt, rain, ice flow and calving now far exceed the net gain from
snow accumulation.

What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet? 3

 https://youtu.be/stm1pBp0rfk

Greenland’s ice mass loss measured by NASA’s Grace satellites.

What does the future hold?

The critical questions are, how fast is Greenland losing its ice, and what does it
mean for future sea level rise?

Greenland’s ice loss has been contributing about 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) per
year to global sea level rise over the past decade.

This net loss is split between surface melt and dynamic processes that
accelerate outlet glacier flow and are greatly exacerbated by atmospheric and
oceanic warming, respectively. Though complex in its manifestation, the
concept is simple: Ice sheets don’t like warm weather or baths, and the heat is
on.

Meltwater lakes feed rivers that snake across the ice sheet - until they encounter a moulin.
Alun Hubbard

What the future will bring is trickier to answer.

The models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict a
sea level rise contribution from Greenland of around 4 inches (10 centimeters)
by 2100, with a worst-case scenario of 6 inches (15 centimeters).

What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet? 4

 But that prediction is at odds with what field scientists are witnessing from the
ice sheet itself.

According to our findings, Greenland will lose at least 3.3% of its ice, over 100
trillion metric tons. This loss is already committed – ice that must melt and calve
icebergs to reestablish Greenland’s balance with prevailing climate.

We’re observing many emerging processes that the models don’t account for
that increase the ice sheet’s vulnerability. For example:

Increased rain is accelerating surface melt and ice flow.

Large tracts of the ice surface are undergoing bio-albedo darkening,

which accelerates surface melt, as well as the impact of snow melting and
refreezing at the surface. These darker surfaces absorb more solar
radiation, driving yet more melt.

In August 2021, rain fell at the Greenland ice sheet summit for the first time on record.
Weather stations across Greenland captured rapid ice melt. European Space Agency

Warm, subtropical-originating ocean currents are intruding into Greenland’s

fjords and rapidly eroding outlet glaciers, undercutting and destabilizing

What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet? 5

 their calving fronts.

Supraglacial lakes and river networks are draining into fractures and
moulins, bringing with them vast quantities of latent heat. This “cryo-
hydraulic warming” within and at the base of the ice sheet softens and
thaws the bed, thereby accelerating interior ice flow down to the margins.

The issue with models

Part of the problem is that the models used for forecasting are mathematical
abstractions that include only processes that are fully understood, quantifiable
and deemed important.

Models reduce reality to a set of equations that are solved repeatedly on banks
of very fast computers. Anyone into cutting-edge engineering – including me –
knows the intrinsic value of models for experimentation and testing of ideas.
But they are no substitute for reality and observation. It is apparent that current
model forecasts of global sea level rise underestimate its actual threat over the
21st century. Developers are making constant improvements, but it’s tricky, and
there’s a dawning realization that the complex models used for long-term sea
level forecasting are not fit for purpose.

Author Alun Hubbard’s science camp in the melt zone of the Greenland ice sheet. Alun
Hubbard

What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet? 6

 There are also “unknown unknowns” – those processes and feedbacks that we
don’t yet realize and that models can never anticipate. They can be understood
only by direct observations and literally drilling into the ice.

That’s why, rather than using models, we base our study on proven
glaciological theory constrained by two decades of actual measurements from
weather stations, satellites and ice geophysics.

It’s not too late

It’s an understatement that the societal stakes are high, and the risk is tragically
real going forward. The consequences of catastrophic coastal flooding as sea
level rises are still unimaginable to the majority of the billion or so people who
live in low-lying coastal zones of the planet.

A large tabular iceberg that calved off Store Glacier within Uummannaq Fjord. Alun Hubbard

Personally, I remain hopeful that we can get on track. I don’t believe we’ve
passed any doom-laden tipping point that irreversibly floods the planet’s

What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet? 7

 coastlines. Of what I understand of the ice sheet and the insight our new
study brings, it’s not too late to act.

But fossil fuels and emissions must be curtailed now, because time is short and
the water rises – faster than forecast.

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