First Time Ever Recorded, Rain at the Summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet
From Gizmodo:
Last week, the Greenland ice sheet underwent a major melting event—its second in two weeks. This time around, the melting was quickened by a wholly unexpected and unwelcome visitor: rain.
Seven billion tons of rain fell on the country last week, and for the first time in recorded history, it rained at the Greenland Summit Camp, a research station near the normally frigid top of the ice sheet. Saturday was also only the third time this decade that temperatures ever rose above freezing at Greenland’s summit, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The big melting event took place across two days last weekend. These large-scale melts can do serious damage to the ice sheet even if they only last a few days. The darker water can absorb the sun’s energy and cause the surrounding ice to melt faster, destabilizing the snow and firn below the surface. The blitz of water can screw up ice sheet dynamics in the longer term as well.
From another Gizmodo article on ice melt:
Greenland Lost Enough Ice in a Single Day to Cover Florida……Sunny skies and hot temperatures have contributed to a major meltdown. It’s part of a worrying long-term trend of ice loss on the island.
The melting of Greenland and the antarctic, along with the thermal expansion of the warming ocean waters, is causing the seas to rise at an ever increasing rate. This gives rise to the loss of landmasses in low-lying areas.
There are three main methods of making this cease: cutting carbon emissions, increasing the volume of carbon absorbing plants, and geoengineering, i.e., making changes to our atmosphere such that it reflects a higher percentage of the sun’s radiation back into space.
Needless to say, geoengineering is a last resort. With each passing day, our civilization is proving how untrustworthy it is. We can’t get people to get vaccinated and to wear masks. America features tens of millions of people who think the 2020 election was rigged. One third of the world population lives in nations without freedoms, i.e., under authoritarian rule. There are wars being waged around the globe 365 days a year. We have world governments run by fascists and deranged theocrats. Corruption is ubiquitous around the globe. There are 141 countries in the world in which Amnesty International has reported on torture in the past five years.
In all, it’s hard to imagine putting human beings in charge of the Earth’s thermostat.
