Unprecedented melting of Greenland’s ice sheet this month has stunned NASA scientists and has highlighted broader concerns that the region is losing a remarkable amount of ice overall.
According to a NASA press release, about half of Greenland’s surface ice sheet naturally melts during an average summer. But the data from three independent satellites this July, analyzed by NASA and university scientists, showed that in less than a week, the amount of thawed ice sheet surface skyrocketed from 40 percent to 97 percent.
In over 30 years of observations, satellites have never measured this amount of melting, which reaches nearly all of Greenland’s surface ice cover.
When Son Nghiem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory observed the recent melting phenomenon, he said in the NASA press release, “This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: Was this real or was it due to a data error?”
Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Georgia-Athens and City University of New York all confirmed the remarkable ice melt.
NASA’s cryosphere program manager, Tom Wagner, credited the power of satellites for observing the melt and explained to The Huffington Post that, although this specific event may be part of a natural variation, “We have abundant evidence that Greenland is losing ice, probably because of global warming, and it’s significantly contributing to sea level rise.”
MORE: Greenland Ice Melt, Measured By NASA Satellites, Reaches Unprecedented Level.