Global warming exposes 1,620 kilometers of new Greenland coastline

Melting glaciers are revealing new land, but the consequences are dire

The Arctic is changing faster than anywhere else on Earth, and now we can see it—literally. As rising temperatures accelerate the pace of Arctic glacier retreat, nearly 2,500 kilometers of new coastline have emerged in just two decades. According to a study, Greenland alone accounts for over 1,600 kilometers of that new shoreline. This is the result of glaciers pulling back from the sea and exposing previously ice-covered terrain. But while thes…

New coasts emerging from the retreat of Northern Hemisphere marine-terminating glaciers in the twenty-first century

Accelerated climate warming has caused the majority of marine-terminating glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere to retreat substantially during the twenty-first century. While glacier retreat and changes in mass balance are widely studied on a global scale, the impacts of deglaciation on adjacent coastal geomorphology are often overlooked and therefore poorly understood. Here we examine changes in proglacial zones of marine-terminating glaciers ac…

Climate Change Has Exposed Over 1,000 More Miles of Greenland’s Coastline in 20 Years: Study

As our planet has experienced increased warming over the last several decades due to greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, glaciers around the world have been shrinking. An international team of scientists has found that global heating has, over the past two decades, melted enough of Greenland’s glacial ice that 1,006.6 more miles of coastline have become exposed. “Accelerated climate warming has caused the majority of marin…

In the past twenty years, 2,500 kilometers of new coastline have been added to the Earth's northern hemisphere. This is the area from which glaciers have retreated and where the land has been exposed. This was discovered by a team led by Jan Kavan, who works at Masaryk University in Brno and the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. The researchers created a database of more than 1,500 glaciers in the northern hemisphere.

Global warming exposes 1,620 kilometers of new Greenland coastline

An international team of polar ecologists, geographers, and marine scientists has found that global warming has, over the past 20 years, melted enough glacier ice in Greenland that an additional 1,620 kilometers of that country's coastline is now exposed to the elements.

Intense atmospheric rivers can generate heavy snowfall episodes that offset up to 8% of Greenland's annual ice loss, delaying summer melt. However, this may not reverse the overall trend of ice loss. On March 14, 2022, a low-pressure system swept across the North Atlantic and created an atmospheric river in the far north. It is now known that these rivers can temporarily minimize melting in Greenland. Source: MODIS, at europapress.es. A study pu…