Scorch went up to Verum with a question brewing in her mind. She asked, “Does Greenland have many trees, Verum? Is that why it’s called Greenland?”
Verum smiled brightly and replied, “No! On the contrary, nearly 80% of Greenland’s area is covered with an ice sheet. An ice sheet is an enormous mass of glacial ice that is more than 50,000 square kilometers in size. The Greenland ice sheet is 1,710,000 square kilometers!” “That is a lot of ice,” said Scorch.
“Indeed. That’s why despite being the largest island in the world, Greenland has one of the world’s smallest populations,” replied Verum. She began gazing at her crystal ball absent-mindedly. Within moments, the crystal ball had fetched a super important piece of news from Greenland.
“Scorch, there’s news from Greenland,” said Verum, “It rained there!”
“Why is that even a news? Doesn’t it rain in Greenland?” said a puzzled Scorch.
“It is in fact a big news because it doesn’t rain in Greenland,” replied Verum, “Last week, the Summit Station detected rainfall and not snow at the summit (highest point) of the Greenland ice sheet for the first time since record-keeping began in the 1950s. The Summit Station is a research center at the highest point of Greenland maintained by the United States National Science Foundation.”
“Whoa! Now, I see that rainfall is unusual in Greenland,” said Scorch.
“Yeah, usually the summit is frigid but the ice sheet received 7 billion tons of rain over three days,” said Verum, “So, on Sunday, Greenland experienced a mass melting event. That day, the amount of ice melting was seven times the daily amount recorded during this point of the year. The melting event covered 872,825 square kilometers.”
“That’s nearly half of Greenland’s ice sheet,” said a shocked Scorch, “This isn’t good news. Not at all.”
“When it’s caused by global warming, how can it be good news? According to the recent United Nations climate report, the continued burning of fossil fuels led to the melting of ice in Greenland over the past 20 years,” said Verum.
She added, “In 2019, hot temperatures in the spring season and a heatwave in July led to the melting of 532 billion tons of ice which joined the sea. That’s why the global sea levels rose permanently by 1.5 millimeters.”
“That’s worrying,” said Scorch, “Humans must put up a strong fight against global warming.”