The ice sheet off the northern coast of Greenland, once known as the "last ice region," has begun to disintegrate for the first time in historical observation.
This region of the Arctic is home to the oldest and thickest layer of ice in the region, which has previously fought back against global warming.
It lay here for many centuries, maybe millennia. But now he could not stand it either.
Nothing like this has ever been recorded in the history of observations. But now experts are reporting that chunks of this ice fell off twice in 2018 due to warm winds and higher average temperatures in the northern hemisphere. Writes about this The Guardian.
One meteorologist described the loss of this ice as frightening. Others said the event could force scientists to reconsider their theories about which part of the Arctic will hold out the longest against further warming.
In 2018, unusually high temperatures in the northern hemisphere were recorded in February and August.
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“Almost all of the ice sheet in northern Greenland has been destroyed and disintegrated, and therefore there are now just a lot of loose ice blocks floating there,” says Ruth Mottram of the Danish Meteorological Institute.
“The open water off the northern coast of Greenland is an extraordinary sight. This area is often referred to as the "last ice region", as it was assumed to be the most persistent in the Arctic. But the events of the last week indicate that, in fact, the "area of the last ice" is likely to be much to the west."
“The ice in this place has nowhere to go, so it accumulates and accumulates. On average, its thickness is more than four meters, but there are also layers 20 meters thick and even more.
However, last winter (in February and March) the ice began to crumble there and winds push the breakaway pieces away from the coast,”says Walt Meyer, senior researcher at the US National Ice and Snow Data Center.
"So this is pretty dramatic evidence of the transformation of Arctic sea ice and the Arctic climate."
"It's beautiful, but also scary," Thomas Lavergne, a scientist at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, tweeted, publishing an animation of satellite imagery showing the ice splitting and revealing blue open water.
Chunks of breakaway ice are likely to be driven to the Fram Strait in the Kara Sea or to the Nares Strait, which connects the Baffin Sea to the Lincoln Sea, and from there into warm waters.
