The zombie ice covering Greenland’s massive ice mass will raise sea level by at least 10 inches (25 centimeters), according to a study published Monday in Nature Climate Change.
It is a layer that is still attached to thicker blocks of ice, but no longer feeds on the large 'mother glaciers', as the latter are receiving less replenishment snow.
William Colgan, glaciologist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, explained to AP that this surface section is melted by climate change. " It’s dead ice. It’s going to melt and disappear from the [deep] ice sheet," he said.
According to one of the authors of the research, more than 110 trillion metric tons of ice are already doomed to melt because of the inability to replenish its edges due to warming.
Colgan explained that it is not known exactly how long it will take for the 'zombie ice' to melt completely, but it will probably be by the end of this century or no later than 2150. And if there were more years like 2012, when an extreme amount of ice melted, sea level could rise by 30 inches (76 centimeters), he added.
Ellyn Enderlin, professor of geosciences at Boise State University (USA. ), said that some coastal areas will be more affected and that tides and storms could be even worse than now, so this rise in sea level "will have huge social, economic and environmental consequences". (Text and photos: RT in Spanish).
