AspireQuiz

Read the following passage carefully: 

1. Remote, icy and mostly pristine, Greenland plays an outsized role in the daily weather experienced by billions of people and in the climate changes taking shape all over the planet. Think of Greenland as an open refrigerator door or thermostat for a warming world, and it’s in a region that is warming four times faster than the rest of the globe, said New York University climate scientist David Holland.

2. Locked inside are valuable rare earth minerals needed for telecommunications, as well as uranium, billions of untapped barrels of oil and a vast supply of natural gas that used to be inaccessible but is becoming less so. Many of the same minerals are currently being supplied mostly by an Asian country, so other countries are interested. But more than the oil, gas or minerals, there’s ice — a “ridiculous” amount, said climate scientist Eric Rignot. If that ice melts, it would reshape coastlines across the globe and potentially shift weather patterns in a dramatic manner. Greenland holds enough ice that if it all melts, the world’s seas would rise by 24 feet.

3. Since 1992, Greenland has lost about 182 billion tons of ice each year, with losses hitting 489 billion tons a year in 2019. Greenland will be ‘a key focus point’ through the 21st century because of the effect its melting ice sheet will have on sea levels, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. “It will likely become a bigger contributor in the future.” That impact is perhaps unstoppable. Greenland is also changing colour as it melts from the white of ice, which reflects sunlight, heat and energy away from the planet, to the blue and green of the ocean and land, which absorb much more energy.

4. Greenland also serves as the engine and on/off switch for a key ocean current that influences Earth’s climate in many ways, including hurricane and winter storm activity. It’s called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, and it’s slowing down because more fresh water is being dumped into the ocean by melting ice in Greenland. A shutdown of the AMOC conveyor belt is a much-feared climate tipping point that could plunge Europe and parts of North America into prolonged freezes. “If this global current system were to slow substantially or even collapse altogether — as we know it has done in the past — normal temperature and precipitation patterns around the globe would change drastically,” said climate scientist Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center. “Agriculture would be derailed, ecosystems would crash, and ‘normal’ weather would be a thing of the past.”

5. None of that takes into consideration the unique look of the ice-covered island that has some of the Earth’s oldest rocks. “I see it as insanely beautiful. It’s eye-watering to be there,” said Holland, who has conducted research on the ice more than 30 times since 2007. “Pieces of ice the size of the Empire State Building are just crumbling off cliffs and crashing into the ocean. And also, the beautiful wildlife, all the seals and the killer whales. It’s just breathtaking.”

515 words / Adapted from The Hindu (Environment -January 08, 2025 post)