The worst is yet to come for the Greenland ice sheet

Aschwanden, Andy

doi:10.1038/d41586-020-02700-y

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30 September 2020

The worst is yet to come for the Greenland ice sheet

An assessment of past, present and future ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet shows that rates of loss in the twenty‑first century will be much higher than those at any time during the past 11,700 years.

Andy Aschwanden ⁰

Andy Aschwanden
1. Andy Aschwanden is at the Geophysical Institute, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska 99775, USA.
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The Greenland ice sheet is losing ice at an increasing rate, owing to rising air and ocean temperatures¹^,². Melting of the ice sheet is currently increasing global mean sea level by about 0.7 millimetres per year (see go.nature.com/3mrkuw8), but models predict³ that rates could reach between 2 and 7 mm per year by 2100. However, observed and predicted rates of ice-sheet loss have never been evaluated in the context of natural ice-sheet variability. Writing in Nature, Briner et al.⁴ fill this knowledge gap, by simulating the evolution of the Greenland ice sheet throughout the Holocene epoch — that is, over the past 11,700 years. They show that, although present melt rates are comparable to the highest rates during the Holocene, future rates will probably exceed them.

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Nature 586, 29-30 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02700-y

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