Transcript:
Greenland is covered with more than 650,000 square miles of ice, a huge frozen ice cap that covers the island and slowly flows to the ocean.
However, as the climate warms, the ice melts and flows into the ocean, and more cracks or cracks form in the ice sheet as it stretches and pulls apart on the ice sheet.
Some of these cracks are large.
Chudley: “They can be dozens or even 100 meters in width. This is big enough to fly a helicopter.”
Thomas Chudley is a glacologist at Durham University in the UK
In a new study, he and his colleagues found that between 2016 and 2021, the Greenland ice sheet acquired more than 900 million cubic meters of cracks.
This has a dangerous meaning.
When a crack forms, it may cause the flow of the ice sheet to accelerate. This leads to more cracks, triggering the feedback loop of the ice caps being separated faster and faster.
As more and more ice melts into the ocean, sea levels will rise – increasing the risk of flooding in coastal cities.
Chudley: “So what happens to the ice sheet in the next 300 years will affect millions of people living around the world.”
Report credit: Ethan Freedman/Chavobart Digital Media
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