GENEVA • The hot air that smashed European weather records this week looks set to move towards Greenland and could cause record melting of the world's second largest ice sheet, the United Nations has said.
Ms Clare Nullis, spokesman for the UN World Meteorological Organisation, yesterday said the hot air moving up from North Africa had not merely broken European temperature records on Thursday but surpassed them by 2, 3 or 4 deg Celsius, which she described as "absolutely incredible".
"According to forecasts, and this is of concern, the atmospheric flow is now going to transport that heat towards Greenland," she told a regular UN briefing in Geneva. "This will result in high temperatures and consequently enhanced melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet," she said.
Ms Nullis cited data from Denmark's Polar Portal, which measures the daily gains and losses in surface mass of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
"In July alone, it lost 160 billion tonnes of ice through surface melting. That's roughly the equivalent of 64 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. Just in July. Just surface melt - it's not including ocean melt as well."
The Greenland Ice Sheet covers 80 per cent of the island and has developed over many thousands of years, with layers of snow compressed into ice.
The dome of ice rises to a height of 3,000m and the total volume of the ice sheet is approximately 2.9 million cubic km, which would raise global sea levels by 7m if it melted entirely, according to the Polar Portal website.
Greenland had not experienced exceptional weather this year until last month, but its ice had been melting rapidly in recent weeks, she said.
The warmer air also had implications for Arctic ice extent, which was nearly the lowest on record as of July 15, Ms Nullis said.
Yesterday, temperatures cooled slightly throughout Europe, after record highs poured in the previous day as part of an ongoing heatwave.
The mercury in Paris was in the mid-20s mid-morning yesterday, and a sudden downpour of rain saw cheers ring out in the city centre as office workers rushed to windows and balconies to watch.
Belgium registered an all-time record of 41.8 deg C in the northern municipality of Begijnendijk on Thursday, meteorologist David Dehenauw said on Twitter yesterday.
In Germany, records were broken multiple times this week, as temperatures rose to a new high of 42.6 deg C in Lingen in the north-western state of Lower Saxony on Thursday.
French weather service Meteo France announced on the same day that in addition to Paris, which registered a record 42.6 deg C, numerous local record temperatures had been beaten, some by a large margin.
With Belgian authorities having issued a red alert for extreme heat until today, several museums in Brussels threw their doors open on Thursday and yesterday to the elderly to help them keep cool.
In Switzerland, train engineers painted rails white to reflect the heat of the sun.
In Italy, the Health Ministry issued a red heatwave alert for 14 cities, including Milan, Turin, Verona, Florence, Genoa, Bologna, Naples and Bolzano in German-speaking South Tyrol.
REUTERS, DPA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
