Greenland sweating

Greenland sweating A milder climate has sent Greenland on a king-sized diet. The country has lost twice as much ice last year as it did three years ago, reports Ritzau.

Af /ritzau/ 12-02 2008 - 20:02

Greenland loses 140 billion tons of water per year. That's over 1000 times more water than can be found in Denmark's largest lake, Arresø. And the shrinking process is picking up speed every year. The loss of ice has doubled from about 70 cubic km in 2004 to about 140 cubic km in 2007.

'Information shows that an overall loss of ice in Greenland is being recorded,' said René Forsberg of Denmark's Meteorological Institute which has processed the data together with PhD student Louise Sørensen.

The Danish researchers have utilised data from the twin satellites, Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, which are part of an American-German partnership. The satellites orbit the earth at a height of 500km and can register changes in gravity on earth due to minute changes in the distance between the two satellites.

Dorthe Dahl Jensen, a professor in glaciology at Niels Bohr Institute, stated that it is almost certain that an overall loss of ice is taking place on Greenland which will affect the sea level.

'We can confirm this with a high degree of certainty because the loss can be documented by several types of measurements,' said the professor.

If all the inland ice on Greenland was lost, the oceans would rise about seven metres. Antarctica contains about ten times as much ice.