Global warming has been affecting our planet left, right and centre. We often hear how it has caused an exponential increase in temperature in areas that are otherwise freezing and now it has wreaked havoc on the icy regions of our planet.?
And now, it has caused an iceberg as large as the city of Paris to break into pieces.
This is according to researchers at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland who studied satellite images of the aforementioned ice shelf over the past three decades. They saw that around 42.3 square miles, chunks of ice broke off the fjord named Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden, situated in the north-east Arctic region. They claim that rising temperatures are responsible for this catastrophe.
GEUS professor Jason Box said, ¡°We should be very concerned about what appears to be progressive disintegration at the Arctic's largest remaining ice shelf. If we see more warm summers like we observed the last two years, it will be contributing more to the accelerating global sea level rise.¡±
According to researchers, this ice melting has contributed to a 0.4-inch rise in sea level between the year 1992 and 2018.?
Dr Niels J. Korsgaard, another researcher at GEUS explained how collapsing of even one of the shelves contributes to an accelerated thinning and collapsing of glaciers nearby, ¡°When you observe large parts of an ice shelf breaking off you do raise an eyebrow, but with current developments in the Arctic there is also the realisation that this is to be expected.¡±
Researchers hinted that the average temperatures in the region have spiked by 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1980 - with summer temperatures breaking records in 2019 and 2020.