one of my most popular videos is one I
made about a year ago talking about what
would happen if all of the ice on
Antarctica melted but besides Antarctica
there was one other major land mass on
earth covered nearly entirely by
glaciers and that is Greenland and I
don't know why it took me so long to
think about but what if we did the same
here what if Greenland melted as it
stands now Greenland is the largest
island on earth covering an area of 2.1
million square kilometers of that 1.7
million square kilometers are covered in
ice sheets amounting to 81% of the land
being smothered beneath ice which is an
average of 2,000 meters deep and can
reach up to 3 kilometers at its deepest
that totals to around 2.8 5 million
cubic kilometers of ice sitting atop
this island and amounts to 6.7% of all
the fresh water on our planet for some
comparison Antarctica's ice sheets
contain roughly 26 point five million
cubic kilometers or about nine times
more ice and accounts for 62 percent of
all of our freshwater which means that
while all of Antarctica melting could
raise sea levels of 60 metres a melting
of only Greenland would call sea levels
to rise by an estimated 7.2 meters but
because Greenland has less ice that also
means it would take a lot less warming
to actually fully melt it's estimated
that only a 2 to 3 degrees Celsius rise
in temperature could cause all of the
ice to eventually melt from the land and
it's thought that our climate has
already exceeded a tipping point for
many of Greenland's glaciers and will
continue to melt regardless of what we
do now what this results in is a NASA
report showing exceedingly high melt
rates of around 220 cubic kilometers of
ice per year but if we take the total
volume of ice in Greenland and divide it
by the current melt rate we end up with
a total melt time of nearly 13,000 years
or what most people would call a pretty
long time however today's melt rates
aren't going to be tomorrow's melt rates
and there are a number of factors which
in the future will increase the rate of
ice loss first if temperatures continue
to rise so will the rate of melt that
one's an easy one
then as ice melts particles of dust and
soot built up on the surface of the ice
and make the glaciers look really dirty
like this
being an eyesore as the surface of the
glacier becomes darker it absorbs more
of the sun's energy as heat further
increasing the rate of melting across
the island this process is a fairly
quick one - taking only a matter of
years to become noticeable across the
entire island from pictures like these
we can see that in just 12 years the
albedo or how much light is reflected
off the surface of Greenland has already
noticeably decreased showing that
surface darkening is occurring across
nearly the entire ice sheet as it begins
to melt that being said there is still a
lot of ice to melt and even in the worst
case scenario there will still be ice on
Greenland for another few thousand years
but if you did wait around you'd be able
to observe a very interesting landmass
take form so here's the shape of
Greenland now but if we look through the
ice to the bedrock underneath we can see
that a lot of Greenland isn't actually
well land and we'll actually find a
massive lake in the interior of the
island this lake would measure around
250,000 square kilometers for comparison
the Caspian Sea yes the world's largest
lake is about 1.5 times that size while
the next biggest lake Lake Superior
would be about a third the size of this
new lake which would make this the
second largest lake in the world this
great lake is part of what's called
Greenland's Grand Canyon real creative
this hidden Canyon runs for over 750
kilometres making it the longest
anywhere on earth
for some comparison the Grand Canyon in
the United States is only 446 kilometres
long unfortunately the entirety of this
canyon would remain underwater and never
fully explored however this is just the
bedrock underneath Greenland and if all
the ice really were removed from
Greenland the like I mentioned before
sea levels would rise as a result which
means even less of this land would be
above water if we account for the rise
in sea level that would be necessary for
all the ice to you know not be there
anymore we can see these areas in red
would become flooded too now this isn't
actually a whole lot more land however
even with this little amount lost
something important is changed here
where there was once a massive hollow
island with a lake inside of it now
there are three major islands encircling
in inland sea as well as a number of
lesser islands an island class
the biggest island to come out of this
would be roughly 1 million square
kilometers which would mean Greenland or
at least this portion of Greenland would
remain the largest island in the world
as the next biggest New Guinea is only
780 thousand square kilometers the
second largest island would then be
around 320 thousand square kilometers
which would make it the seventh biggest
island on earth right between Honshu
mainland Japan and Sumatra in Indonesia
then lastly the third main island would
be around 230,000 square kilometers
becoming the eighth biggest island being
just barely bigger than Honshu again
mainland of Japan together these islands
would add up to roughly 1.6 million
square kilometers which means that 74%
of Greenland would remain above sea
level or in other words more than 1/4 of
Greenland's land area would be lost if
it were to melt so the next question
people might want to ask is what would
the land here look like and well that's
pretty easy to say actually because
there's a number of very similar islands
right next door in Canada these islands
would fall under the term Arctic
Archipelago were glaciated to a
comparable degree to Greenland that is
to say very glaciated up until when the
most recent ice age was coming to a
close despite this being around 12,000
years ago these islands for the most
part have remained barren as they're
freezing average temperatures will warm
enough to prevent the formation of
massive ice sheets is still too cold to
foster high levels of organic
productivity or diversity overall these
islands are the closest real-world
comparison I can make to a melted
Greenland and shows that what remains of
Greenland would be a barren and rocky
landscape however there is evidence that
some soil from Greenland's long distant
past remains buried beneath the ice and
the melting waters might deposit a layer
of captured dust and soot which might
help some types of life start to reclaim
the frozen lands now Greenland does have
one forest today in the kinwa Valley in
the extreme southern end of the island
and it's possible that with an increase
in temperature and of removal of the ice
along with a generous deposition of soil
to the Greenlandic bedrock this forest
might be able to expand further north
while it's uncertain how far trees could
make it you know because we don't know
how much the earth's temperature is
going to change
there are currently surviving
as far north on Greenland as the Congo
Lucia cured so it's reasonable to think
that without ice trees in a warmer
future could make it at least to this
point but in the end most of the land
revealed by this melting would remain
inhospitable for long-term human
habitation
however inhospitable doesn't mean
unproductive and although large-scale
commercial agriculture would be
impossible like any landmass hidden
under miles of ice for so long there is
expected to be a large amount of Mineral
Resources which have gone completely
untapped the countries of Europe have
already started looking into Greenland
as a potential future source of raw
materials and in particular of rare
earth metals though without knowing the
future prices of any of these resources
it's tough to say which specific ones
would be profitable to extract from
Greenland in the distant future but
there is perhaps one limited resource
that we do know a melted Greenland would
have available dry land because of this
I can see Greenland's greatest resource
in the event of its own melting being
its potential salvation for climate
refugees specifically in the event of
sea level rise of certain low-lying
countries of nearby Europe could find it
easier to move to unsettled lands rather
than push their way into an already
densely populated Europe and while their
new home might be far less comfortable
than their old one there's at least one
thing they'd never have to worry about
again having fresh water I hope you
enjoyed the video and if you did might I
suggest checking out the video I made
about a year ago about if Antarctica
melted - I'd like to of course thank my
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don't know when I'll be back with
another video though I will be trying to
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