Visualizing the Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet

As we head into summer in the Northern Hemisphere, this may be a good time to look at the melting ice.  Greenland lost 2 billion tons of ice….yesterday alone.  For those wanting to know what this looks like, here’s the approximate math:

(2*10⁹ tons) X (2*10³ pounds/ton) X (5*10² grams/pound) X (1 cc/gram) X 2.5*10-16 cubic miles / cc) = 0.5 cubic miles.

If that’s hard to visualize, try to think of Manhattan Island with 120 feet of ice on it, or New York City’s Central Park (1.3 square miles) with 2030 feet of ice on it, about 600 feet higher than the tip of the Empire State Building.