The ice sheet covers 80% of Greenland, or 1.7 million square kilometers, making it the second largest mass of ice on Earth after that of Antarctica.
Under the effect of climate change, its melting, even partial, will have a major effect on the rise in sea level.
However, the estimates published in the journal
Nature
this Wednesday are dizzying: taking into account all the scenarios of the UN climate experts in terms of greenhouse gas emissions in the decades to come (from the most optimistic to the most pessimistic), American researchers estimate that the Greenland ice sheet could permanently lose 8,800 to 35,900 billion tonnes of its mass by the end of the century.
This phenomenon alone could cause a rise in sea level of the order of 2 to 10 cm by 2100.
Read also:
The last glaciers of Greenland, real sentinels of the climate
Observations on the past, present or future of this ice cap have already been made.
"But these periods are often treated separately"
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