Greenland: Rain fell on Greenland’s ice sheet for the first time ever known. Alarms should ring - by Kim Heacox

Many people believed he couldn’t do it. Ski across the Greenland ice sheet, a vast, unmapped, high-elevation plateau of ice and snow? Madness.

But Fridtjof Nansen, a young Norwegian, proved them wrong. In 1888, he and his small party went light and fast, unlike two large expeditions a few years before. And unlike the others, Nansen traveled from east to west, giving himself no option of retreat to a safe base. It would be forward or die trying. He did it in seven weeks, man-hauling his supplies and ascending to 8,900ft (2,700 meters) elevation, where summertime temperatures dropped to -49F (-45C).That was then.

Last month, for the first time in recorded history, rain fell on the highest point of the Greenland ice sheet. It hardly made the news. But rain in a place historically defined by bitter cold portends a future that will alter coastlines around the world, and drown entire cities.

Read more at: Rain fell on Greenland’s ice sheet for the first time ever known. Alarms should ring | Kim Heacox | The Guardian