- Author: Carole Hom
NASA this week reported that over a four-day period in July, almost all of the ice sheet that covers Greenland experienced some amount of surface melting.
Even central Greenland, two miles above sea level and near the highest point of the ice sheet, warmed to within a degree of freezing. Melting in the ice sheet at this region had not occurred since 1889, according to ice cores analyzed by Kaitlin Keegan, a trainee in Dartmouth College's IGERT in polar environmental change.
According to NASA scientist Tom Wagner, "The Greenland ice sheet is a vast area with a varied history of change. This event, combined with other natural but uncommon phenomena, such as the large calving event last week on Petermann Glacier, are part of a complex story. Satellite observations are helping us understand how events like these may relate to one another as well as to the broader climate system."
/table>