Despite what the deniers say, climate change is a very real and present problem. Global warming is melting the ice sheets at record amounts, and a recent incident really brought home the grim reality of our dying Earth once again.
According to CNN, Steffen Olsen, a scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute, was in northwest Greenland on a mission to retrieve oceanographic and weather monitoring tools that his colleagues had placed on sea ice when he saw something devastating.
There was no sea ice. Instead, it was covered in light blue water – the result of flooding from Greenland’s ice sheet, the second largest on the planet.
The photo he took of sled dogs ankle-deep in a massive expanse of water might look stunning, but it’s just more evidence of our ongoing climate disaster.
Communities in Greenland – mainly indigenous – rely on the sea ice for transport, hunting and fishing. They will be among the first affected by the melting of the ice sheet, but the repercussions will not remain limited to Greenland or even North America.
Greenland’s ‘melt season’ lasts from June to August, with most of the melting happening in the hottest month of July. However, this year almost 40% of Greenland experienced melting on June 13 – the day Olsen took the photo – for a massive total melt of more than 2 billion tons of ice.
Early melting can lead to a massive increase in global temperatures because less heat is reflected off the planet. That heat then causes sea temperatures to rise, which then causes more ice to melt, leading to a dangerous cycle that can only be slowed down by immediate action.