It is raining on the summit of Greenland for the first time since it was recorded

(CNN) – For the first time in recorded history, at the Greenland summit, about three kilometers above sea level, it rained over the weekend, not snow.

Last weekend, for the first time in a decade, temperatures rose above freezing in Greenland, triggering the event of heavy rain pouring 7 billion tons of water enough to fill Washington City’s National Mall reflection pool. 250,000 times on ice.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, this is the heaviest rainfall since records began in 1950.

“Recognize that Greenland is warming faster”

Ted Scampos, a research scientist at the National Ice and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, is proof that Greenland is warming faster.

“What is happening is not a hot decade or two in the form of changing weather,” Scambose told CNN. “It’s unprecedented.”

In July, Experienced the biggest decade of the past decade in the same place, losing more than 8.5 billion tons of surface area in a single day, which would be enough to submerge Florida in two inches of water.

This is the third major shore event in the last decade, during which time the shoreline spreads more inland than during the entire satellite period that began in the 1970s.

Summit

Jennifer Mercer, manager of the National Science Foundation’s polar programs office, said activities at the summit should change due to the big rain event.

“We need to take into account weather events that we have not previously dealt with in the history of its operations,” Mercer told CNN.

The National Science Foundation Summit Center is located on the summit of the Greenland Glacier, where scientists can observe changes in the Arctic climate and ice. The station has been operating year-round since 1989 to see drastic changes.

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Effects of rainfall

According to Mercer, rain has a lasting effect on the properties of snow, leaving an overlay that absorbs most of the energy from the sun until it is buried by snow.

The crust layer will be a barrier to prevent the melting of the crust, which will submerge the surface of the ice sheet and cause water to begin to escape at higher elevations.

“This lasting change will be visible in Ice Core records in the future,” he said.

Massive ice melts quickly when the air temperature is hot. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Sunday’s surface loss was seven times hotter than average in mid – August.