It rains on the summit of Greenland for the first time since it has been recorded

Alert for massive thaw in Greenland 0:36

(CNN) -

For the first time on record, rainfall at the Greenland summit, about two miles above sea level, fell as rain, not snow, over the weekend.

Last weekend, temperatures at Greenland's highest point rose above freezing for the first time in this decade, sparking an event of extreme rains that dumped 7 billion tons of water, enough to fill the reflecting pond of the National Mall of the city of Washington, almost 250,000 times in the ice sheet.

It was the heaviest rain since records began in 1950, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

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"Sign that Greenland is warming rapidly"

Ted Scambos, a research scientist at the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center, said this is proof that Greenland is warming rapidly.

"What is happening is not just a warm decade or two in a changing weather pattern," Scambos told CNN.

"This is unprecedented."

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In July, the same place experienced one of the largest thaws of the last decade, losing more than 8.5 billion tons of surface mass in a single day, which would be enough to submerge Florida in two inches of water.

This was the third extreme thaw event in the past decade, during which the thaw has spread further inland than during the entire age of satellites, which began in the 1970s.

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Summit Station

Jennifer Mercer, program manager for the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs, said that due to the major rain event, operations at Summit Station would have to change.

"It means that we have to take into account weather events that we have not had to deal with before in the history of our operations there," Mercer told CNN.

The National Science Foundation Summit Station is located at the top of the Greenland Ice Sheet, where scientists can observe Arctic weather and changes in the ice.

The station is staffed all year round to observe extreme changes since 1989.

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Effects of rain

Warning for massive thaw in Greenland 0:36

According to Mercer, the rain will have a lasting effect on the properties of the snow, leaving a crust that will absorb more energy from the sun, until it is buried by the snow.

Scambos pointed out that this layer of crust will also be a barrier that will prevent the descent of the meltwater, which will flood the surface of the ice sheet and will initiate the outflow of water in the highest areas.

"This lasting change will be visible in the ice core records in the future," he said.

Massive ice sheets can melt quickly when the air temperature is warm.

Sunday's surface mass loss, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, was seven times warmer than the mid-August average.

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