Officials said the Greenland ice sheet lost 8.5 billion tons of surface mass in a single day last week, enough ice to submerge Florida in two inches of water.

The intense melt that occurred on July 27 was caused by heat waves in northern Greenland that raised temperatures to more than 68 degrees Fahrenheit – twice the average summer temperature, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute.

While that volume was below the record for a single-day snow melt in 2019, which was 12.5 billion tons, last week’s event covered a larger area.

Scientists have estimated that melting from the Greenland ice sheet has caused about 25% of the global sea level rise seen over the past few decades.

And if all of Greenland’s ice melted, global sea level would rise by another 20 feet – but that’s not expected any time soon.

Melting events could create feedback loops that lead to further warming and melting in Greenland, according to Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University.

“It really puts Greenland to be more vulnerable for the rest of the melt season,” Tedesco, a research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told Reuters.

The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second largest mass of freshwater ice on the planet, with an area of ​​about 1.8 million square kilometers (695,000 square miles), second only to Antarctica.

The melting of the ice sheets began in 1990 and has accelerated since 2000.

Researchers at Polar Portal say mass loss in recent years is four times greater than it was before 2000.

Greenland’s thaw usually begins in June and lasts through August, but data shows the island has lost more than 100 billion tons of ice since June.

“It’s hard to say is it going to be a record year of melt this year? But there’s so much warm, moist air above the ice sheet that is causing an astonishing amount of melt,” Brad Lebowski, a glaciologist at the University of Washington, told the Guardian. “What’s disturbing to me is the political response. “Or not. Sea level rise is like a slow train, but once it rolls you can’t stop it, it’s not great news.”

Tedesco and other scientists caution that the models used to project future ice loss do not reflect the effect of changing atmospheric circulation patterns – meaning they may underestimate the future melting of Greenland, which lies between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.

Meanwhile, the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, due to factors including the disappearance of ice in the Arctic Ocean.

The European Union said temperatures over Greenland were “alarming” on July 28.

The Greenland ice sheet has grabbed headlines recently, as scientists fear it is approaching a point of no return with “accelerated melt”.

The stern warning was issued last May by scientists at the University of Copenhagen and the University of the Arctic in Norway, who analyzed the Jacobshavn Basin, located in the central western part, one of the five largest basins in Greenland.

And if this area were to melt as severely as the rest of the massive ice sheet, it could disappear completely – an event that would raise global sea levels by 23 feet.

“We may be witnessing the onset of large-scale destabilization, but at the moment, we cannot be certain, unfortunately. So far, the signals we are seeing are only regional, but it may simply be due to a paucity of data,” said Dr Niclas Boers, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, in a statement. The minute and long-term effects of other parts of the ice sheet.