Sources of melting ice
The main sources of melting ice are:
- Greenland ice sheets: 286 gt/y
- Antarctic ice sheets: 127 gt/y
- Glaciers (excluding Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets): 335 gt/y
A really bad world record
On 1st of August 2019, Greenland lost 12.5 billion tons of ice in a single day. The largest amount of ice ever lost on a single day. Normally, it would take 6 days of combined melting from the world's glaciers and ice sheets to reach the same amount.
Nine trillion tons. That's how much ice Earth's glaciers lost in just 55 years from 1961 to 2016.
Arctic sea ice spiralling down
The area covered by Arctic sea ice in the summer of 2019 was the second lowest on record. In the 40 years period, only the 2012 level of sea ice was lower.
2019 shares the second place with 2007 and 2016 meaning that the four years with the lowest level of sea ice all happened in the last 12 years.
And it gets worse:
The 13 smallest summer lows on record for Arctic sea ice have all occurred in the last 13 years.
The sea ice level recorded in July of 8,800 cubic kilometres is 47% below the average for the period 1979–2018.
There are no signs of a slowdown in the rate of melting, as global temperatures continue to go up.
Not surprisingly, global sea levels are rising as a consequence of the melting ice caps.
