In Greenland, vegetation actively appears on the site of a thawed ice sheet. The number of wetlands that produce methane has also quadrupled.
Such changes threaten to increase greenhouse gas emissions, sea level rise and landscape instability.
This was reported by The Guardian with reference to a study published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports.
British scientists saw that natural changes began in the 1980s. Since then, large areas of ice have replaced barren cliffs, wetlands, and shrubs.
In Greenland, the amount of vegetation is actively increasing. Photo: Michael_PhD
Using satellite images, scientists have found that over the past three decades melted about 17.7 thousand square kilometers of ice sheet and glaciers of Greenland. This is 1.6% of the total ice cover of the country and is equivalent to the area of Albania.