Recent satellite images showed that Northern Greenland reached 15C this month following an intense heatwave.

Ice in the area, which is usually well below freezing, has melted by nearly six trillion kgs in just three days. That’s enough water to leave almost the entire area of Northern Ireland standing in a foot of water.

A photo from the EU’s Copernicus satellites showed massive tons of sediment pouring into a fjord – a glacial bay leading into the ocean – as ice from the island’s vast ice sheet melted this month.

Temperatures in the Arctic region have recently hit nearly 16 degrees Celsius which is unusual for Northern Greenland which remains below freezing, even in summer, with a maximum temperatures of 0C.

The extreme heat led to massive melting from the island’s gigantic ice sheet between 15-17 July, sending billions of gallons of freshwater into the ocean.

‘The northern melt this past week is not normal, looking at 30 to 40 years of climate averages,’ Ted Scambos, a University of Colorado scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told CNN.

In 2019, Greenland’s ice sheet lost an average of one million tonnes of water every minute enough to fill up 200 million Olympic-size swimming pools.

In February, scientists found that Greenland’s ice sheet was vanishing from the bottom up – increasing flood risks across the planet. The shock discovery is the culmination of a seven-year project focused on Store Glacier – one of the largest outlets.

Huge quantities of water falling from the surface to the base was accelerating the melt rate.

A UK-led team calculated up to 82 million cubic metres of meltwater a day was transferred to the bed during the summer of 2014.

During peak periods it produced as much power as the Three Gorges Dam in China – the world’s biggest hydroelectric station.

The world’s second largest ice sheet is three times the size of Texas – extending 656,000 square miles and covering most of the island. Global sea levels would rise by another twenty feet if it were to completely disappear.

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