(ETH) – For the first time on record, precipitation on Saturday at the summit of Greenland — roughly two miles above sea level — fell as rain and not snow. According to CNN, Temperatures at the Greenland summit over the weekend rose above freezing for the third time in less than a decade.
The warm air fueled an extreme rain event that dumped 7 billion tons of water on the ice sheet, enough to fill the Reflecting Pool at the National Mall in Washington, DC, nearly 250,000 times. It was the heaviest rainfall on the ice sheet since record-keeping began in 1950, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, and the amount of ice mass lost on Sunday was seven times higher than the daily average for this time of year.
Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, said this is evidence Greenland is warming rapidly. “What is going on is not simply a warm decade or two in a wandering climate pattern,” Scambos told CNN. “This is unprecedented.”
According to NBC News, The rare rainfall caused significant melting at the summit and along the ice sheet’s southeastern coast over the weekend and occurred just weeks after the region experienced a separate extensive melting event in late July. The recent warm spell adds to concerns that climate change is rapidly melting ice in the Arctic, which accelerates sea-level rise around the world.
Above-freezing temperatures were recorded at Summit Station, which sits at an elevation of 10,551 feet above sea level, beginning Saturday at 5 a.m. local time. The National Snow and Ice Data Center estimated that over the course of three days 7 billion tons of rain fell over the ice sheet. “Warm conditions and the late-season timing of the three-day melt event coupled with the rainfall led to both high melting and high runoff volumes to the ocean,” National Snow and Ice Data Center researchers said in a statement.
