Glaciers and ice caps in parts of the Russian Arctic are losing meltwater equivalent to nearly five million Olympic-sized swimming pools every year.
The quantity of ice lost between 2010 and 2018 would submerge an area the same size as the Netherlands under seven feet of water.
Rising temperatures in the Arctic Ocean seem to be playing a key role in accelerating ice melt from two large archipelagoes that border the Kara Sea.
Between the years of 2010 and 2018, the Novaya Zemlya and Severnaya Zemlya archipelagos – which make up a combined area of about 50,000 square miles – lost a total of 11.4 billion tonnes of ice annually.
The stability of several of the region’s glaciers and ice caps has already been affected by the thinning of the ice, with concerns that more ice loss could be seen in the future, said the research team.
Greenland's ice sheet lost 8.5 billion tons of surface mass in a single day last week, enough ice to cover Florida in two inches of water. The extreme melting, which occurred July 27 was due to heatwaves in northern Greenland that raised temperatures to more than 68 degrees Fahrenheit - double the average summer temperature, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute.
Scientists have estimated that melting from Greenland's ice sheet has caused around 25 percent of global sea level rise seen over the last few decades. If all of Greenland's ice were to melt, the global sea level would increase by another 20 feet - but this is not expected to happen anytime soon. The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest mass of freshwater ice on the planet, with nearly 1.8 million square kilometers (695,000 square miles), second only to Antarctica.
Melting events can create feedback loops that drive further warming and melting in Greenland, according to Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University. As snow melts, it exposes darker ice or ground beneath, which absorbs more sunlight rather than reflecting it back out of the atmosphere.
The melting of the ice sheets started in 1990 and has accelerated since 2000. The mass loss in recent years is approximately four times greater than it was before 2000, say the researchers. Data shows the island has lost more than 100 billion tons of ice since June.
Brad Lipovsky, a glaciologist at the University of Washington, explained, 'The alarming thing to me is the political response, or lack of it. Sea-level rise is like a slow-moving train, but once it gets rolling you can't stop it. It's not great news.'
According to Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University warned that models used to project future ice loss do not capture the impact of changing atmospheric circulation patterns - meaning they may be underestimating the future melting of Greenland.
Russian Arctic losing billions of tons of ice due to climate change | The Independent
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