365 Days of Climate Awareness 62 – Greenland

Greenland is an independent territory part of the Danish realm, and is the world’s largest non-conttinental island, being part of the North American tectonic plate. Greenland is largely arctic, being almost entirely above 60 degrees north latitude, and more than 75% of that above the 66.5 degree Arctic Circle. 81% of Greenland is covered by an ice sheet with an average thickness of 2 km and a volume of 2.85M km^3 (680,000 mi^2), enough to raise global sea level by 7.2 m if it were to melt. Since the 90’s the ice sheet has been losing mass annually.

The accelerated melting of the ice sheet in recent years has led to fears of two events: increased sea level rise, and interference in North Atlantic surface currents. Models have predicted that a rise in global temperature of 2 deg C from 1900 would cause the entire sheet to melt. But the steady influx of cold, fresh meltwater from Greenland is thought to pose a threat to the North Atlantic Current.

The hypothesis holds that the surface layer of cold water flowing south and east would possibly block or divert the northward current, diminishing or ending the evaporative, convective events east of Greenland which are central to Europe’s habitable climate and to the North Atlantic current system. This is an area of active and growing investigation.

Tomorrow: the Arctic Ocean.

Topography (including ice)

Seasonal melt patterns

Gravimetric bedrock topography

Be well!

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This post was previously published on Dailykos.com and is republished on Medium.

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