WATCH: @chrislhayes on the major melting event in Greenland: "This is what climate change looks like." #inners pic.twitter.com/3nn2rD8uFI
— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) August 3, 2019
The heatwave that sweltered several European countries last month has now hit Greenland. In just one day, (Wednesday) the sweltering heat accelerated ice sheets to melt, which resulted in the loss of 11 billion tons of ice water to the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
Mike Sparrow, a spokesman for the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, told the Associated Press:
“These kind of heat waves are weather events and can occur naturally but studies have shown that both the frequency and intensity of these heat waves have increased due to global warming.”
Sparrow also commented that ice spread in the Arctic and Antarctic currently measure at record lows.
“When people talk about the average global temperature increasing by a little more than 1 degree (Celsius), that’s not a huge amount to notice if you’re sitting in Hamburg or London, but that’s a global average and it’s much greater in the polar regions.”
Not only has the sweltering heat resulted in massive ice sheet melting, the Arctic has suffered an unprecedented number of wildfires.
