The heat wave of Europe has moved to Greenland. Eleven billion tons of ice melted across the country on Wednesday alone, the largest melt this season.
While Greenland's ice sheets tend to melt in summer, record temperatures have led to a longer melting season. As sea levels rise around the world, the likelihood of extreme weather events and coastal flooding increases.
An estimated 197 billion tons of ice from Greenland melted into the Atlantic Ocean in July, Ruth Mottram, climatologist at the Danish Meteorological Institute, told CBS News on Friday. That's about 36 percent more than scientists expect on average for the year.
"The melting area was much larger when the warm air mass from Europe arrived, but there was also a long period of warm and dry weather from May and after a dry winter, so this is an additional push, and not the main reason for the very high ice loss that we have observed." she added.
There is still one month left until the end of the thaw season, and warm air mass is still present across much of Greenland, Mottram said.
Europe experienced life-threatening heat last week, with France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom all setting records: 38 degrees in London, 43 degrees in Paris. As the heatwave has moved to the Arctic and Greenland, Arctic sea ice is reaching new record lows.
82 percent of Greenland's surface is covered with ice. The country is home to the second largest ice sheet in the world after Antarctica. Together, these two ice masses hold enough frozen water to raise global mean sea level by 65 meters if they suddenly melt.