Greenland’s ice sheet melted 17 times faster than its average rate during a May heatwave that also affected Iceland, according to a report released by the scientific network World Weather Attribution (WWA) on Wednesday.
The Arctic region is on the frontline of global warming, heating up four times faster than the rest of the planet since 1979, according to a 2022 study in the scientific journal Nature.
Climate change intensified the seven-day heatwave in May in Iceland by about three degrees Celsius, the WWA said.
And in Greenland, “the melting rate of the Greenland ice sheet by, from a preliminary analysis, a factor of 17… means the Greenland ice sheet contribution to sea level rise is higher than it would have otherwise been without this heat wave,” one of the authors of the report, Friederike Otto, told reporters.
“Without climate change this would have been impossible,” said Otto, an associate professor in climate science at Imperial College London.
The data from the May 15-21, 2025 heatwave was compared to the average ice melt for the same week during the period 1980-2010.
In Iceland, the temperature exceeded 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) on May 15, an unprecedented occurrence for that time of year on the subarctic island.
“Temperatures over Iceland as observed this May are record-breaking, more than 13 degrees Celsius hotter than the 1991-2020 average May daily maximum temperatures,” the WWA said.
In May, 94 per cent of Iceland’s weather stations registered record temperatures, according to the country’s meteorological institute.
In eastern Greenland, the hottest day during the heatwave was approximately 3.9°C warmer than the preindustrial climate, the WWA stated.
“While a heatwave that is around 20 degrees Celsius might not sound like an extreme event from the experience of most people around the world, it is a really big deal for this part of the world,” Otto said.
“It affects the whole world massively,” she said.
More intense heatwaves have hit the two territories in recent decades, but they have occurred later in the summer — in late July and early August in 2008, and in August 2004.
Cox’s Bazar Life Desk/BSS
