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The melting Greenland Ice sheet has important effects on the global climate for two separate reasons. First the melting ice sheet decreases its size and the amount of light that it reflects back into space. Exposed ground, on the other hand absorbs the light and reflects heat back into the atmosphere. This helps to aggravate global warming. The second, and probably more important effect, has to do with the fresh water being added to the Atlantic ocean.

One of the engines that pushes nutrients around the Atlantic basin is the sinking of Arctic waters. The warmer, lighter waters from the Gulf Stream are cooled as they approach the colder Arctic waters. As these waters are cooled their density increases and they flow back to the bottom of the central Atlantic Ocean. The waters displaced from the bottom of the ocean by this flow carry nutrients back to the surface fueling the cycle of life in the Atlantic.

As the fresh water from the Greenland Ice sheet flows into the North Atlantic it changes the density of the water by decreasing the salt concentration. This less dense cold water does not mix as well with the denser lower layers of the Atlantic. As a result the circulation does not pick up as much of the nutrients that continue to settle out to the bottom of the ocean. This means that these nutrients are effectively lost to the plankton that are the base of the food chains in the ocean. Fewer plankton growing leads to less CO2 being removed from the atmosphere, further aggravating global warming.

Finally it appears that there will be a radical shift in the change in this circulation when a critical salt concentration is reached. Once this critical concentration is reached, and there is still some disagreement as to what that concentration actually is, it will be very difficult to reverse the process.

All this means that the melting of the Greenland Ice sheet is both an effect of global warming and an aggravating factor accelerating global warming. As such it is something that everyone needs to be concerned about.

Learn more about this author, Patrick Coyle.
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