The danger signal comes from the north pole. The ice sheet in Greenland is melting which, if equalized, could be as large as the United States (US).
According to the latest satellite data compiled by four Danish research institutes joined at the Polar Portal, the Greenland ice sheet melted more than 5,100 billion tons or 4,700 metric tons of ice in the last 20 years.
As quoted from Space, if the melting ice was combined at one time, it could flood the entire US with a height of 0.5 meters.
Greenland's extensive ice loss has contributed to a global sea level rise of 1.2cm in two decades.
The data, which was collected from April 2002 to August 2021, was observed by a fleet of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites launched in March 2002. This satellite has the task of measuring changes in gravity around the globe, to find out how mass is distributed around the Earth from time to time.
Portal Poral says that the benefits are useful for estimating changes in ice mass in Greenland. Furthermore, Portal Poral also mentions that the most severe melting of Greenland's ice is around the coast, where the ice is rapidly thinning and falling into the sea.
A striking fact is in western Greenland. There, warming subsurface water is thought to increase glacial melting.
According to NASA, melting Greenland ice is one of the main factors driving global sea level rise.
If there is no prevention, the US space agency said, Greenland's ice is now continuing to melt and contribute to a global sea level rise of 7-13 cm in the next 2100.
For your information, Greenland is the only region that has a permanent ice sheet outside Antarctica. Both Greenland and Antarctica contain 99% of the world's total freshwater reserves. If the entire Greenland ice sheet were to melt, it would raise the world's sea level by 7.4 meters.