(Image: Pixabay CC0)
(Image: Pixabay CC0) Increasing melt threatens to saturate the firn layer that covers the Greenland ice sheet. Saturation of this layer will dramatically increase global sea level rise, adding about 9 mm a year from the Greenland ice sheet alone (the current sea level rise from all sources is about 4 mm per year). A new study by researchers from Utrecht University, the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, and University of Colorado Boulder now shows that this threshold could be reached as early as the first half of the 22 century. The findings were published online this weekend in the journal Nature Communications. Sponge. Over 90 percent of the Greenland ice sheet is covered by an up to hundred meters thick, porous layer of compressed snow, called firn. "This layer full of air pockets can be seen as a sponge." says Brice Noël , lead author of the paper.
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