COPENHAGEN: Rain fell at the highest point on Greenland`s ice sheet possibly for the first time in an event Danish scientists on Monday said was most likely driven by climate change.

The rain was observed for several hours on August 14 at a measuring post more than 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) up on the sheet, the US Snow and Ice Data Centre reported.

For rain to fall, temperatures must be above or just slightly below zero degrees Centigrade, signalling the risk that rising temperatures pose to the world`s secondlargest ice sheet after Antartica.

`This is an extreme event as it may never have happened before,` Martin Stendel, a researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, said.

`It`s probable that this is a sign of global warming.` Temperatures have risen above freezing at the peak of the sheet only nine times in the past 2,000 years, he said.

Three of those events have been in the past 10 years but on the previous two occasions, in 2012 and 2019, there was no rain, he said.

`We cannot prove whether it rained or not at the six occasions before but it`s very unlikely, which makes the rainfall we observed even more remarkable,` Stendel said.

The rain comes after a summer in which northern Greenland has experienced record-setting temperatures of more than 20 degrees.

This heat wave has seen the rate of melting of the ice sheet accelerate further.-AFP