The dramatic melting of Greenland’s ice sheet in the summer of 2019 – which saw near-record rates - was largely down to a persistent zone of high pressure over the region, according to a scientific paper published this April.
The fate of the ice sheet will be a crucial determinant in sea level rise.
One of the paper’s authors told the Guardian: ‘This melt event is a good alarm signal that we urgently need to change our way of living to hold [back] global warming because it is likely that the [UN climate body’s] projections could be too optimistic for [the] Arctic’.