Greenland: The white parts indicate St. Louis-style, white-hot temperatures.
However, the abnormally hot summer St. Louis is experiencing is not a localized occurrence. AP writer Seth Borentstein has an article over at Salon that explains why Greenland, the island nation in the North Atlantic that normally has a year-round ice sheet covering its center, is also unusually warm this year. So warm in fact that rather than the normal 40 percent melt-rate the ice sheet normally experiences in summer, this year saw a four-day stretch in which the melt rate jumped to 97 percent. Yikes.
The source of Greenland's increased temperatures is something with which we're all familiar: the stationary high pressure system.
According to Borenstein, climatologists compare Greenland's high-pressure misery to
"...the high pressure systems that have parked over the American Midwest, bringing record-breaking warmth and drought."Of course, St. Louis doesn't have any ice sheets or glaciers, unlike Greenland. And at the rate Greenland is heating up, it won't have too much ice before long, either. Native Greenlander Jens Moller recorded this footage of a glacier disintegrating in the heat late last week.
As terrifying as that wall of ice and water is, I have to admit my first thought was, "I wonder if that water is too cold for a swim?"
This summer is never gonna end.
