Smoke from Arctic wildfires may have caused Greenland's record thaw

The freak melt of the Greenland ice sheet last summer may have been forced by smoke from Arctic wildfires, new research suggests.

Satellite observations, due to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Friday, for the first time tracks smoke and soot particles from tundra wildfires over to Greenland.

Scientists have long known that soot blackens snow and ice, reducing its powers of reflectivity and making it more likely to melt under the sun.

But the satellite records, due to be presented by the Ohio State University geographer Jason Box, go a step further, picking up images of smoke over Greenland at the time of last summer's extreme melt.

Greenland experienced its most dramatic melting since satellite records began last July, with virtually the entire ice sheet showing signs of a thaw over the course of four days. Box oversaw the Greenland portion of Noaa's annual report on the Arctic, which was released earlier this week and was in Greenland around the time of last summer's extraordinary melt.