Global warming could lead to a greener Greenland

Research published in Nature suggests that enough greenhouse gases could be in the atmosphere as early as 2050 to melt the massive ice-sheet that covers Greenland. As a result, sea levels could rise by around seven metres over the next 1,000 years.

Along with colleagues in Belgium and Germany, Dr Jonathan Gregory, of the Centre for Global Atmospheric Modelling (CGAM) at the University of Reading and the Met Office Hadley Centre, has estimated that Greenland is likely to pass a threshold of warming beyond which the ice-sheet cannot be sustained unless much greater reductions are made in emissions of greenhouse gases.

The researchers looked at how Greenland’s temperature could change with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations over the next 350 years, and found that warming was likely to pass the critical threshold in 34 out of 35 model calculations.

Greenland’s average temperature only needs to increase by 3 degrees Celsius to melt its ice-sheet, but some of the modelling studies forecast an 8 degrees Celsius rise by the year 2350.

“Without the ice-sheet, the climate of Greenland would be greatly altered,” says Dr Gregory. “Unlike the ice on the Arctic Ocean, much of which melts and reforms each year, the Greenland ice-sheet might not re-grow even if the global climate were returned to pre-industrial conditions.”