For the first time ever recorded, in the late summer of 2021, rain fell on the high central region of Greenland’s ice sheet. The historic event was followed by the surface snow and ice melting rapidly.
The study was conducted by researchers from the Department of Glaciology and Climate at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). Rain was measured by new weather stations placed across the ice sheet by GEUS’ ice sheet monitoring projects PROMICE and GC-Net.
“It turns out that the rain itself wasn’t the most important factor,” says Prof. Jason Box from GEUS.
“There is an irony. It’s not really the rain that did the damage to the snow and ice, it’s the darkening effect of the meltwater and how the heat from the event erased snow that had overlaid darker ice across the lower third of the ice sheet.
The main culprit was the heat itself, melting and completely removing the surface snow, thereby changing the surface albedo, Greek for “whiteness,” so that Greenland ice and snow absorbed more of the Sun’s rays.
https://phys.org/news/2022-05-historic-greenland-ice-sheet-rainfall.html