The Greenland ice sheet may be more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought. Rising air and ocean temperatures both cause it to melt, and one intensifies the effects of the other. This occurs when warm air temperatures melt the ice sheet surface, generating meltwater. Meltwater flowing into the ocean creates turbulence that results in more heat melting the edges of the ice sheet submerged in the ocean (submarine melting). It seems that if the atmosphere hadn’t warmed since 1979, the retreat of Greenland’s glaciers, driven by submarine melting, could have been reduced by half in the northwest region, and by a third across Greenland as a whole. It’s one more example of how scientists learn that warming calculations have to be refigured based on finding that something unexpectedly affects something else.
www.ed.ac.uk/news/2022/vast-ice-sheet-facing-climate-fight-on-two-fronts