A Possible Tie Between Sunrise and Climate Change
Each year, the sun rises in Greenland on January 13th.
This year, the run rose 48 hours earlier than expected. Baffling for scientists, one most likely explanation ties this peculiar occurrence to climate change. According to Thomas Posch, of the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Vienna,
a local change of the horizon was ‘by far the most obvious explanation’… as the ice sinks, so to does the horizon, creating the illusion that the sun has risen early.
This explanation does not go unsupported. For example, 2010 was recently named the warmest year on record (along with 2005). Moreover, Greenland’s temperatures are 3ºC above last years average. December was warmer and rainier, replacing what would have typically been snowfall, than existing records show historically.
