“2021 is the 25th year in a row in which Greenland’s ice sheet lost more mass during the course of the melting season than it gained during the winter.”
That’s according to the latest report from Polar Portal, a website featuring observations from Danish research institutions that monitor the Greenland Ice Sheet and the sea ice in the Arctic.
The report explains that while “the early part of the summer was cold and wet with unusually heavy and late snowfall in June, which delayed the onset of the melting season,” July saw a heatwave that “led to a considerable loss of ice.”
The Greenland Ice Sheet lost about 166 billion tonnes of ice during the 12-month period that ended in August, which is near the annual average since the mid-1980s, the report notes. From September 1986 to August 2021, it has lost about 5,500 billion tonnes, contributing 1.5 centimeters to the average global rise in sea levels of about 12 centimeters.
The ice sheet ended this season with a net surface mass balance of about 396 billion tonnes. Although that “makes the current season the 28th lowest in the 41-year time series,” or a “somewhat average year,” the report highlights “how our perspective changes in line with climate change,” explaining that in the late 1990s, “the same figure would have been regarded as a year with a very low surface mass balance in the climate picture at that time.”
For 25th year in a row, in 2021 #Greenland’s Ice Sheet lost more mass during melting season than it gained in winter
Cold wet early summer delayed onset of melting season, but heatwave at end of July led to a considerable loss of ice@PolarPortal report: https://t.co/Q86TBy1KM6 pic.twitter.com/fJGW1vyskb— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) January 7, 2022
The report explains various observations in detail, including unusual weather during the 2021 Arctic summer, extreme melting periods despite average temperatures, and sea ice dropping to its second-lowest level last July.
Last year was also “notable,” the report says, because “precipitation at Summit Station, which is located at the ‘top’ of the ice sheet at an altitude of 3,200 meters above sea level, was registered in the form of rain.”
When the rain was recorded in August, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center noted that “there is no previous report of rainfall at this location (72.58°N 38.46°W), which reaches 3,216 meters (10,551 feet) in elevation.”
The historic event was also highlighted by Michelle McCrystall, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba, when a team she led published Arctic rainfall research in November.
“The fact that we’re getting rainfall on the summit of Greenland right now, and that we’re maybe going to get more rainfall into the future — it kind of staggers me,” she said.
McCrystall’s team wrote that “the transition from a snow- to rain-dominated Arctic in the summer and autumn is projected to occur decades earlier and at a lower level of global warming, potentially under 1.5°C, with profound climatic, ecosystem, and socioeconomic impacts.”
Their paper came mere months after Niklas Boers of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said that a research team he led “found evidence that the central-western part of the Greenland Ice Sheet has been destabilizing and is now close to a critical transition.”
“We’re at the brink, and every year with CO2 emissions continuing as usual exponentially increases the probability of crossing the tipping point,” Boers warned. “It might have passed [the tipping point], but it’s not clear. However, our results suggest there will be substantially enhanced melting in the near future, which is worrying.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy