When you think of the Greenland ice sheet, you might have images like this in mind: an iceberg breaks off and crashes down into the Arctic Ocean like a giant elevator whose ropes have been cut. There is a larger process behind such events: Greenland’s glaciers are losing mass at their edges and retreating inland. This is happening all around Greenland, according to US scientists led by Chad Greene from the California Institute for Technology in Pasadena in the journal Nature describe for the first time. Accordingly, the area of the Greenland ice sheet is shrinking more than expected: it is said that more than 5,000 square kilometers have been lost in this way since 1985. This corresponds to roughly twice the area of Saarland.
Climate crisis: Greenland’s ice sheet is disappearing faster than expected – knowledge
