Greenland lost enough ice in three days to cover West Virginia with a FOOT of water

Greenland experienced high temperatures around 60 degrees Fahrenheit last weekend that resulted in a tremendous amount of ice melt – experts say it was enough to flood West Virginia under a foot of water.

This ‘spike melt,’ from July 15 through 17, was due to temperatures being 10 degrees warmer than normal, scientists with the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) told CNN.

About 80 percent of Greenland, which is the 12th largest country in the world, is covered in an ice sheet. If this ice were to melt completely, the amount of water released into the ocean would raise sea levels by 22 feet.

And this ‘enough to double the frequency of storm-surge flooding in many of the world’s largest coastal cities” by the end of the century, scientists from Ohio State University warned in 2020.

Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, told CNN that this past weekend’s high temperatures were nothing that has been seen in the 30 to 40 years of records on climate in Greenland.

The Artic has been rapidly warming due to climate change. Recent data in April shows this region could be warming up to four times as fast as any other region in the world.

And some experts fear that summer sea ice could completely disappear by 2035.

Last weekends melting event saw six billion tons of water pour into the surrounding sea, which the NSIDC notes is enough to fill 7.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.

This ‘spike melt,’ from July 15 through 17, was due to temperatures being 10 degrees warmer than normal

Kutalmis Saylam, a scientist at the University of Texas who is currently conducting research in Greenland, told CNN that the ‘heatwave’ is worrisome because over the weekend she and her team were outside in t-shirts.

Last weekends melting event saw six billion tons of water pour into the surrounding sea, which the NSIDC notes is enough to fill 7.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools

The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest mass of freshwater ice on the planet, with nearly 695,000 square miles, second only to Antarctica.

The melting of the ice sheets started in 1990 and has accelerated since 2000.

On July 27, 2021, Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University reported Greenland’s ice sheet lost 8.5 billion tons of surface mass in a single day, which was enough ice to cover Florida in two inches of water.

However, this extreme melting event occurred with temperatures over 68 degrees.

But it was 2019 that shattered all the melting records so far.

Researchers with the Center for Polar and Marine Research, found the ice sheet lost 532 gigatons of mass overall, which is 15 percent higher than the previous record holder – 2012.

And in February 2022, scientists from the Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute found the ice sheet is melting from the bottom up and deemed it the largest single contributor to global sea level rise.