The amount of ice that melted in Greenland on Tuesday alone was enough to cover the entire state of Florida in two inches of water, scientists have warned.

While the volume was less than the record loss recorded in 2019, the ‘massive melting event’ covered a larger area, according to Polar Portal, a group of Danish arctic research institutions.

Ice melted in Greenland flows into the ocean as water, contributing to the increase in sea levels driven by human-induced climate change.

The impacts have been especially felt in the Arctic, which is warming three times faster than the global average.

Scientists have estimated that melting from Greenland’s ice sheet – the second-biggest on Earth after Antarctica’s – has caused around 25% of global sea level rise seen over the last few decades.

Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University, said a patch of high pressure had sucked warmer air from further south ‘like a vacuum cleaner’ causing record high temperatures of 19.8C on Wednesday, the Guardian reports.

He said: ‘We had these sort of atmospheric events in the past but they are now getting longer and more frequent.

‘The snow is like a protective blanket so once that’s gone you get locked into faster and faster melting, so who knows what will happen with the melting now.’

With deadly heatwaves, flooding and wildfires occurring around the world, calls are growing for urgent action to cut the CO2 emissions heating the planet.

Across southern Europe authorities have warned that the current heatwave could reignite wildfires which have been ravaging the region.

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It Italy, around 1,000 people were evacuated after a state of emergency was declared on Sardinia.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said firefighters had been called on to tackle around 50 blazes in the space of just 24 hours as temperatures rose to 39C.

Large parts of Spain were also scorched, with more than 1,600 hectares of land destroyed after a major forest fire broke out in Catalonia last week.

And six people, including two firefighters, have now died after almost 100 fires erupted across southern and western Turkey.

Although common in the summer months, authorities have warned that the latest fires have been covering much larger areas.

The wildfires are the latest extreme weather events to hit Europe after devastating floods in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands left more than 180 people dead.

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