Greenland’s accelerated rate of melting threatens 100 million people each year with flooding by 2100. The dire estimates suggest at least 40 million more people will suffer as a direct of climate change than previously thought.
An international team of scientists has found Greenland ice is melting seven times faster than it has in the 1990s.
Satellite data collected between 1992 and 2018 shows the rate spiked from 33 billion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 254 billion tonnes in the last decade.
According to Professor Andrew Shepherd from the University of Leeds, the flooding will have a profound effect on the livelihood of untold millions.
Professor Shepherd told Express.co.uk: “That’s quite an alarming result. You just have to imagine if we had another sevenfold increase in the next 25 years, for instance, where things would be.
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“So the rate of sea-level rise due to Greenland is hovering somewhere today at around one millimetre per year.
“Another sevenfold increase would be very alarming if that was the case.
“So we need to be really careful now with future sea-level predictions and improve confidence in those.
“The numbers might not have mattered in the past 30 years but a seven-fold increase has gotten us to a situation where the present contribution is still quite manageable but will very, very quickly end up in a situation that becomes unmanageable.”
Professor Shepherd said the researchers expected to see the rates of melting under a warming global climate.
That’s quite an alarming result
Professor,Andrew Shepherd, University of Leeds
But in the last five to 10 years scientists have started to see “a very strong increase” in ice loss.
The Greenland ice sheet holds enough water to raise the world’s sea levels by nearly 20ft (6m) if it melts.
The online FireTree app lets you see which parts of the world will flood when the sea levels rise this high.
Since 1992, the ice sheet has lost enough ice – about 3.8 trillion tonnes – to push the sea levels up by about 10.6 millimetres.
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In 2013, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted the seas will rise by 23.6 inches (60cm) by the end of 2100.
The estimate placed around 360 million people around the globe in the direct path of flooding.
But according to the new estimates, an additional 40 million people will feel the impact.
According to Professor Shepherd, just 0.4 inches (1cm) of sea-level rise will impact about 6 million people.
As a result, the expert expects about 100 million people to suffer from floods each year by the end of 2100.
Professor Shepherd said: “Greenland is doubly sensitive to climate change, which probably explains why it’s losing as much ice as Antarctica, even though Antarctica is as large.”
The double sensitive comes from the melting of Greenland’s surface ice but also the warming of ocean waters.
A similar study of Earth’s melting cryosphere has found 1.9 billion people are at risk of losing access to drinking water.
The Greenland study was published on December 10 in the journal Nature.
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