According to the study, led by the University of Leeds, over the past decade alone 3.5 trillion tonnes of ice has melted from the surface of the Greenland island and flowed downhill into the ocean. This is enough melted ice to cover the entire UK with around 15 metres of meltwater or to submerge New York City beneath 4,500 metres.
The study is the first to use satellite data to detect this phenomena – known as ice sheet runoff – from space.
The findings, published in Nature Communications, reveal that Greenland’s meltwater runoff has risen by 21 per cent over the past four decades and has become 60 per cent more erratic from one summer to the next.
Lead author Dr Thomas Slater, a research fellow in the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds said: “As we’ve seen with other parts of the world, Greenland is also vulnerable to an increase in extreme weather events.
“As our climate warms, it’s reasonable to expect that the instances...