CNN —At the top of the world, northern Greenland’s huge glaciers — long thought to be relatively stable — are in trouble, a new study shows. As the ocean warms, Greenland’s last remaining ice shelves are rapidly weakening, destabilizing the nearby glaciers and threatening potentially “dramatic” consequences for sea level rise, according to the study published Tuesday in Nature Communications. When they melt and weaken, more of the land-based ice is able to slide into the ocean, adding to sea level rise. Since 1978, the ice shelves supporting northern Greenland’s glaciers have lost more than 35% of their total volume, according to the study. After the collapse of the Zachariæ Isstrøm glacier’s ice shelf in 2003, the ice discharge into the ocean doubled, according to the study.

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Persons: Greenland’s, ” Romain Millan, “, Millan, ” Millan, Copernicus, Thomas Traasdahl, Ritzau Scanpix, Sophie Nowicki, Nowicki, ” Organizations: CNN, Nature Communications, Grenoble Alpes University, Copernicus Sentinel, ESA, Getty, University at Buffalo Locations: Greenland, France, ”, AFP, Antarctica