When snow turns to rain
The size of the Greenland Ice Sheet is dynamic and affected by snowfall, melt and glacier calving, which varies greatly from year to year. With the climate changing quickly in the Arctic these years, it is therefore of utmost importance to keep monitoring how these changes cascade through the ice dynamics and ultimately affect how fast the ice melts. More Arctic rain looming on the horizon is especially concerning, Andreas P. Ahlstrøm explains:
"In a warmer climate, we can expect more variability from year to year, and this also applies to snowfall. A warmer atmosphere will be able to transport more moisture and thus increase precipitation. The concern is that the warming could mean that the precipitation in the Arctic increasingly falls as rain instead of snow. This will accelerate melting at the surface rather than slowing it down as it did this year.”
GEUS's ice sheet monitoring projects PROMICE and GC-Net continuously monitor the state of the ice sheet by measuring the processes removing and contributing mass, respectively. Although measurements from individual years may vary considerably, the last 28 years have all shown an overall decline in the total mass of the ice sheet.
Read more about the researchers' work on the project's website promise.org