What is in news : for the first time on record, the summit of Greenland received rain and not snow, just as temperatures at the spot went above freezing for the third time in less than ten years.

Details :

• At the highest point on Greenland’s ice sheet, America’s National Science Foundation maintains a Summit Station, a research facility that observes changes occurring over the island as well as in Arctic weather.
• On Saturday, the facility observed rain at the normally frigid summit, with the precipitation extending up to Greeland’s southeast coast.
• The rain, coupled with warm conditions, caused a major melting event at the summit, adding to concerns of rapid ice melting running off into the ocean in volumes, thus accelerating global sea level rise.

Why is it caused : Greenland, which is two-thirds the size of India, already witnessed one of its most severe melting events of the past decade last month, when it lost 8.5 billion tons of surface mass in one day– the third such extreme event in the past decade. The UN’s “code red” climate report released last week concluded that the burning of fossil fuels led to Greenland melting in the last 20 years.

About GREENLAND

• Is the world’s largest island
• Located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans,
• Autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark
• Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America it has been politically and culturally associated with Europe (specifically Norway and Denmark, the colonial powers) for more than a millennium, beginning in 986