Recently the summit of Greenland received rain and not snow. This has sparked fear as scientists are pointing to it as evidence that Greenland is warming rapidly.

About Greenland

• Greenland is the world’s largest island located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
• It is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark.
• Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe (specifically Norway and Denmark, the colonial powers).
• The majority of its residents are Inuit, whose ancestors migrated from Alaska through Northern Canada, gradually settling across the island by the 13th century.
• It has three-quarters of its surface covered with a permanent ice sheet, which is increasingly coming under threat because of climate change.

Rain at Greenland: The rarest phenomenon

• At the highest point on Greenland’s ice sheet, the US maintains a Summit Station, a research facility that observes changes occurring over the island as well as in Arctic weather.
• Researchers observed rain at the normally frigid summit, with the precipitation extending up to Greenland’s southeast coast.
• The rain, coupled with warm conditions, caused a major melting event at the summit.
• This led to rapid ice melting running off into the ocean in volumes, thus accelerating global sea-level rise.

A cause of worry

• Greenland, which is two-thirds the size of India, already witnessed one of its most severe melting events.
• It has lost 8.5 billion tons of surface mass in one day– the third such extreme event in the past decade.
• The UN’s “code red” climate report released last week concluded that the burning of fossil fuels led to Greenland melting in the last 20 years.
• The rapid melting is also threatening polar bears, which now have to make their way hundreds of kilometers towards Greenland’s interior from the coasts, where they usually find enough food.

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