CNN
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When Laura Larocca visited Denmark in 2019, climate scientists pored over thousands of old aerial photographs of Greenland’s icy coastline. These photos were rediscovered about 15 years ago in a castle outside Copenhagen.
This historic image, now housed in the National Archives of Denmark, has given her and other researchers a new look at the history of the region’s glaciers and how they have changed in a rapidly warming climate. Inspired to build.
Larocca’s team digitized thousands of archived paper images dating back to the 1930s and then combined them with modern-day satellite images of Greenland to measure how much the frozen landscape has changed. .
The comparison found that Greenland’s glaciers have been receding at an alarming rate over the past 20 years. This week, the study Journal “Natural Climate Change”the rate of glacier retreat in the 21st century was found to be twice that of the 20th century.
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Larocca, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University at the time, said the study was “extremely time-consuming, requiring many people and many hours of physical labor.” “This change is surprising and highlights the rapid pace at which the Arctic is warming and changing.”
Over the past few decades, the Arctic Heats up 4 times faster A 2022 study showed it outperformed the rest of the world. The aftereffects of that global warming are increasing. For the first time on record, It rained on the top of Greenland — Summer 2021, approximately 2 miles above sea level. Early this week, discovered by scientists Giant glaciers in northern Greenland were long thought to be relatively stable, but now they could have a “dramatic” impact on sea level rise, researchers say.
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What struck Larocca most was that the Danish pilots who took the original photo had no idea that it would make such a major contribution to climate science almost a century later. Ta.
“It’s very interesting that many of these photos were taken for military operations,” she said. “So they’re tied to a lot of international and U.S. history as well. But now, more than 100 years later, we’re using these photos for science to understand how these glaciers have changed over time. In some ways, it’s great that we’re documenting how things have changed.”
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Larocca, now an assistant professor in Arizona State University’s Department of Ocean Futures, said this new visual-focused study draws attention to the rapidly melting region and the threat it poses to the world’s coastlines as sea levels rise. He said he was looking forward to it.
“[The paper] It confirms that the choices we make over the next few decades and how much we reduce emissions really matter for these glaciers,” Larocca said. “Each small increase in temperature has a significant impact on these glaciers. Rapid action to limit global temperature rise will really help reduce future glacier loss and their impact on sea level rise. It’s helpful.”