Nothing will stop Greenland's ice sheet from shrinking now
By Stephanie Pappas - Live Science Contributor 3 hours ago
The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing 500 gigatons of ice each year, and will continue to do so, even if global warming halted instantly.
(Image: © courtesy Michalea King)
The Greenland Ice Sheet has reached a point of rapid retreat that it couldn't recover from even if global temperatures stopped rising instantly.
This Arctic ice sheet is the second-largest ice sheet in the world, after the one that blankets Antarctica. It covers the majority of Greenland and melts into the seas via outlet glaciers, which have been rapidly losing ice for decades. Now, new research finds that today's glacial ice loss is 14% greater than it was between 1985 and 1999. The ice sheet is losing approximately 500 gigatons of ice each year, more than is replenished by annual snowfall.
Projecting that trend forward, the ice sheet is set to lose mass 99 out of every 100 years, researchers reported Aug. 13 in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment.
"Glacier retreat has knocked the dynamics of the whole ice sheet into a constant state of loss," study co-author Ian Howat, an Earth scientist at The Ohio State University, said in a statement. "Even if the climate were to stay the same or even get a little colder, the ice sheet would still be losing mass."
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https://www.livescience.com/greenland-melt-point-of-no-return.html?utm_source=notification
= new reply since forum marked as read
yes. 
After we are gone, many species will be very grateful. Hell, Mother Earth will be dancing. 