Greenland ice melted much faster than average in May heatwave, scientists say

Greenland's ice sheet melted 17 times faster than the historic average during a May heatwave that also hit Iceland, the scientific network World Weather Attribution (WWA) said in a report Wednesday.

"The melting rate of the Greenland ice sheet by, from a preliminary analysis, a factor of 17... means the Greenland ice sheet contribution to sea level rise is higher than it would have otherwise been without this heatwave," one of the authors of the report, Friederike Otto, told reporters, adding that "without climate change, this would have been impossible".