A single storm in 2022 dumped enough snow on Greenland to replace 8 percent of ice lost that year. With warming, the Arctic is seeing stronger atmospheric rivers, which could deliver enough snow to slow the loss of ice, according to a new study.
Atmospheric rivers, which ferry water vapor from the tropics to the Arctic, are growing more frequent and intense as the Arctic warms, raising fears of more intense rainfall that will hasten the loss of ice. But as the new study shows, atmospheric rivers can also produce huge volumes of snow.
On the Norwegian island of Svalbard, the atmospheric river unleashed a torrent of rain that turned snow to slush. But in Greenland, it had the opposite effect.
When scientists from the University of Oulu in Finland traveled to Greenland to gauge the impact of the atmospheric river, they found it had left a thick layer of densely packed snow. The storm produced 16 billion tons of snow in total, they estimate, which may eventually harden into glacial ice.
“I was surprised by just how much snow was dumped on the ice sheet over such a short period,” said study coauthor Alun Hubbard. The storm, he said, made a “gobsmacking contribution” to the growth of the Greenland ice sheet.
Researchers say the layer of white snow also had a cooling influence. By reflecting sunlight, it delayed summer melting by 11 days. Their findings were published in Geophysical Research Letters.
“Sadly, the Greenland Ice Sheet won’t be saved by atmospheric rivers,” Hubbard said. “But what we see in this new study is that, contrary to prevailing opinions, under the right conditions atmospheric rivers might not be all bad news.”
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