Live Science reports:

Greenland’s enormous ice sheet has been struck by a “massive melting event,” with enough ice vanishing in a single day last week to cover the whole of Florida in two inches (5 centimeters) of water, Danish researchers have found.

Since July 27, roughly 9.37 billion tons (8.5 billion metric tons) of ice has been lost per day from the surface of the enormous ice sheet — twice its normal average rate of loss during summer, Polar Portal, a Danish site run by Arctic climate researchers, reported. The huge loss comes after temperatures in north Greenland soared to above 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius), which is double the summer average, the Danish Meteorological Institute reported.

High temperatures on July 28 caused the third-largest single-day loss of ice in Greenland since 1950; the second and first biggest single-day losses occurred in 2012 and 2019. Greenland’s yearly ice loss began in 1990. In recent years it has accelerated to roughly four times the levels before 2000. [Continue reading…]