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News From the Field

Thin Clouds Drove Greenland's Record-breaking 2012 Ice Melt


April 3, 2013

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If the sheet of ice covering Greenland were to melt in its entirety tomorrow, global sea levels would rise by 24 feet. Three million cubic kilometers of ice won't wash into the ocean over night, but researchers have been tracking increasing melt rates since at least 1979. Last summer, however, the melt was so large that similar events have shown up in ice core records only once every 150 years or so over the last four millennia.Full Story

Source
University of Wisconsin-Madison

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