Greenland ice melts at full speed: these are the images 2:32
(CNN) --
Widespread ice losses from Greenland have ensured a global sea level rise of nearly 30 centimeters (a foot) will occur in the near future, and new research suggests there is no way to stop it, even if the world stopped releasing the emissions that cause global warming today.
The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that total ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet will cause sea level rise of at least 25 centimeters (10 inches), regardless of warming scenarios. climate.
That's generally the same amount that global seas have already risen over the last century by combining Greenland, Antarctica, and thermal expansion (when ocean water expands as it warms).
Greenland's ice is melting faster than thought 1:30
Researchers from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland looked at changes in the volume of the ice sheet in and around Greenland and found that meltwater runoff has been the main driver.
Using a "well-established theory," the scientists were able to determine that about 3.3% of the Greenland ice sheet, equivalent to 110 billion tons of ice, will inevitably melt as the ice sheet reacts to changes that have already happened.
Sea level rise due to this melting ice will occur "regardless of any foreseeable future climate directions this century," according to lead author Jason Box, a scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
"Technically, this water is already under the bridge."
It rains on the summit of Greenland for the first time since records are kept
While the authors did not specify a timeline, they predict that sea level change may occur between now and the end of the century.
The research was solely to estimate a minimum, or "a very conservative lower bound," of sea level rise due to melting in Greenland, "and in the virtually certain case that the climate continues to warm, sea level compromise." it will only grow," Box said.
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Huge ice sheets can melt rapidly when air temperatures are warm, but warmer ocean water is also eroding the sheet around the edges.
The findings follow a 2022 sea level rise report released earlier this year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which found that US coastlines could expect a sea level rise of 25 to 30 centimeters in the next 30 years.
This will cause high-tide flooding to occur 10 times more frequently and allow storm surge to spread inland, according to the report.
Alert for massive melting in Greenland 0:36
Greenland has enough ice that, if it were to melt, it could raise sea levels by about 7.5 meters or 25 feet worldwide.
The researchers point out that a sea level rise of 6 meters or 20 feet does not mean that it will rise evenly around the world, leaving some places devastated while sea levels drop in others.
As places like Greenland lose ice, for example, they also lose the gravitational pull of ice on water, meaning Greenland's sea level is falling as sea level rises elsewhere, said William Colgan, a researcher Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
The pace of that change is the problem, Colgan told CNN's Bill Weir during a fact-finding trip in the summer of 2021.
"It's going to be really hard to adjust to such rapid change," Colgan said, standing on Greenland's Jakobshavn Glacier, where the fjord is filled with ice that has broken off the glacier.
Before human-caused climate change occurred, temperatures close to 0 degrees Celsius were not known in Greenland.
But since the 1980s, the region has warmed about 1.5 degrees per decade, four times faster than the global rate, making temperatures more likely to cross the melt threshold.
Several days of unusually warm weather in northern Greenland recently triggered rapid melting, with temperatures around 15 degrees Celsius warmer than normal for this time of year, scientists told CNN.
Just the amount of ice that melted in Greenland between July 15 and 17 (6 billion tons of water per day) would be enough to fill 7.2 million Olympic swimming pools, according to data from the National Snow and Ice Center. from USA
Global scientists have said that the trends in which climate change is accelerating are quite clear and that unless emissions are cut immediately, many more extreme melting events will continue to occur with greater intensity and frequency.
René Marsh and Angela Fritz of CNN contributed to this report.
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