Viral photo shows extent of ice melt in Greenland

An image showing sled dogs ankle deep in water where thick ice would normally be has gone viral.

The image, taken by Steffen Olsen, a scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute, shows the devastating extent of ice melt in Greenland.

{mosads}The water the dogs are walking through, according to CNN, is due to flooding from excessive melting of Greenland’s ice sheet, the second largest in the world.

Olsen was reportedly on a mission to retrieve climate monitoring tools his colleagues placed on the sea ice when he snapped the now-viral photo.

In a post on Twitter last week, Olsen wrote that communities in Greenland “rely on the sea ice for transport, hunting and fishing.”

Olsen’s colleague, Rasmus Tonboe explained, the phenomenon depicted in the image in a post on Twitter as well.

“Rapid melt and sea ice with low permeability and few cracks leaves the melt water on top,” he wrote.

Communities in #Greenland rely on the sea ice for transport, hunting and fishing. Extreme events, here flooding of the ice by abrupt onset of surface melt call for an incresed predictive capacity in the Arctic @BG10Blueaction @polarprediction @dmidk https://t.co/Y1EWU1eurA

— Steffen M. Olsen (@SteffenMalskaer) June 14, 2019

CNN reports Greenland’s typical “melt season” runs from June to August but has seen massive amounts of ice loss this month, earlier and more dramatic than what typically occurs in July.