Greenland's ice sheet will shrink more this century than at any point in the past 12,000 years, outstripping an earlier period of warming that began 10,000 years ago, scientists predict.
Between 2000 and 2018 the ice sheet shrank at a rate of 6100 billion tonnes per century, but that rate could accelerate to unprecedented levels, a team from the US, Canada and Denmark concluded.
The paper, published in the journal Nature, compares rates of mass loss to those seen during a natural period of warming in the early Holocene era, between 10,000 and 7000 years ago.
While current levels of loss are comparable to the highest rate of shrinkage during that period, which were around 6000 billion tonnes per century, this will not be be the case over the rest of the century, the team's models show.
On average over the 21st century the ice sheet will lose between 8800 and 10,600 billion tons in a low-emissions scenario and 14,000 to 35,900 billion tonnes in a high-emissions scenario, the model predicts.