For the first time rain lashes peak of Greenland’s ice sheet

New Delhi : For the first time in known times, rain has been registered on the highest point on Greenland's ice sheet, said Danish scientists. They called this can be certainly because of the climate change.

The rain was observed for several hours on August 14 at a measuring post more than 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) up on the sheet, the US Snow and Ice Data Center reported.

For rains, the temperature must be above or slightly below zero degrees, showing the rise in temperature at the world's second-largest ice sheet after Antartica.

"This is an extreme event as it may never have happened before," Martin Stendel, a researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, told AFP.

"It's probable that this is a sign of global warming."

Temperatures have risen above freezing at the peak of the sheet only nine times in the past 2,000 years, he said.

Three of those events have been in the past 10 years -- but on the previous two occasions, in 2012 and 2019, there was no rain, he said.

"We cannot prove whether it rained or not at the six occasions before but it's very unlikely, which makes the rainfall we observed even more remarkable," Stendel said.

So far, the earth has seen melting of ice glaciers due to increasing temperatures.

With a surface area more than three times that of France, the ice sheet covering Greenland locks up enough water to raise global sea levels by up to seven metres.

The melting is causing concern among scientists, as warming in the Arctic is faster than the global average.