Discover - USA (2020-01 & 2020-02)

Wet Paws

Sled dogs wade through a melting ice sheet in Greenland as researchers from the

Danish Meteorological Institute travel to retrieve equipment in June. Three months

earlier, a team of scientists in Denmark, the U.K. and the U.S. had published a study in

Science Advances, predicting that over 25 percent of global sea level rise is due to the

Greenland Ice Sheet melting; and Greenland alone could contribute 13 inches to sea

level rise by the end of the century. Without substantial reductions in greenhouse gas

emissions, the researchers project, the island’s ice will disappear entirely before the

end of the millennium.

i

From Antarctica to Greenland to

the Himalayas, study after study

in 2019 reported the world’s ice is

melting at an accelerated rate. New sci-

entific innovations allowed researchers

to better quantify mass ice losses, and

their studies exposed startling trends.

The new findings paint a troubling future

for glaciers around the world: If current

ice-loss rates continue, scientists predict

the collapse of glaciers around the world

before the end of the century.

A Melting Planet

BY DANIEL BASTARDO BLANCO

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