At a Glance

More than 11 billion tons of ice melted on Wednesday alone.Wednesday's melt was enough to raise sea levels by 0.02 inches in a one-month period.Global warming is making heat waves more frequent and intense.

The extreme heat that Europeans is now over Greenland, where experts say it's causing rapid melting and massive ice loss in the Arctic, directly impacting rising sea levels.

More than 11 billion tons of ice melted on Wednesday alone, creating a net loss of some 217 billion tons of ice from Greenland in July, Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute, told the Associated Press. Some of that melt was absorbed by snowpack, but according to Mottram, most of it – 197 billion tons of water – flowed into the Atlantic Ocean.

To put that in perspective, 1 billion tons of ice loss is enough to fill 400,000 Olympic-size pools, according to the AP.

Mottram said about 56 percent of the ice surface in Greenland was experiencing melting on Wednesday.

July's melt was enough to raise sea levels by , Martin Stendel, a researcher with the institute, told the Washington Post.

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The past winter saw below-average snowfall in western Greenland. Such a year can actually lead to enhanced melting and runoff, as the darker underlying snowpack from the previous year - which absorbs more heat than fresh snow - is exposed more quickly.

"This is the year Greenland is contributing most to sea-level rise," Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia University, told the Washington Post.

This image taken on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2019 shows large rivers of water from melting on an ice sheet in western Greenland.

(Caspar Haarløv, Into the Ice via AP)

The world's largest island, Greenland sits between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Some 82% of its surface is covered in ice, but the region has experienced several rapid melting events in recent years. Experts say that's largely due to a warming climate.

A study released in May predicted that sea level could rise by by 2021, fueled by increased melting, particularly in Greenland and Antarctica.

The past few days of warming was caused by that brought record heat to Europe last week, according to Weather Underground meteorologist Bob Henson.

"The same air mass that led to the sharpest, hottest heat wave ever recorded in northwestern Europe was channeled across Scandinavia over the weekend," he said in a recent Cat 6 blog post, adding that the extreme weather would be enough to push ice layer melting into "overdrive" for several days.

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While this week's melt hasn't yet broken a record set in 2012, it's close.

Wednesday marked only the ninth time in 2,000 years that the highest point on Greenland's ice sheet experienced melting, according to Robert Rohde, lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, a climate science analysis group.

Heat waves are nothing new, but they are happening more frequently and with more extreme temperatures as the Earth's atmosphere gets warmer.

"These kind of heat waves are weather events and can occur naturally but studies have shown that both the frequency and intensity of these heat waves have increased due to global warming," Mike Sparrow, a spokesman for the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, told the AP.

Those studies have shown that extreme heat waves are now occurring at least 10 times more frequently than 100 years ago, and there is no sign of that slowing down.

Arctic sea ice extent – the area of ocean covered by ice, which is separate from the land-based ice on Greenland – was already at for July before the heat wave moved in, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

"That's especially worrisome because, for every unit area, less volume implies ice that's thinner and easier to melt and disrupt," Henson said.

As of August 1, the National Snow and Ice Data Center that Arctic sea ice extent was below the previous August 1 record, set in 2012, by a margin of 189,000 square kilometers – an area larger than the state of Missouri.

"In the longer term, the prognosis for ice in Greenland and the Arctic remains bleak, especially if fossil fuel emissions continue unabated," Henson said.