Ice-cold impact: Why Greenland matters for a warming world

What happens in Greenland doesn’t stay in Greenland. Turns out, the fate of the world’s largest island has outsize importance for billions of people on the planet. That’s because of the one thing that Greenland is quickly losing: ice. Most of Greenland’s landmass, which takes up about two million square kilometres in all, is covered in ice. That ice is melting rapidly because the polar regions of the world are warming rapidly, with wide-ranging consequences for the stability of the Earth’s climate. Blame the burning of coal, oil and gas. Their emissions have driven up global temperatures, most strikingly in…