NOTE: Another related story posted here
By Steve Goddard
A popular AGW cottage industry from 2003-2007 was to make press releases warning that the Greenland ice sheet was melting down. Some fine pieces of journalism were produced, like this one from the BBC.
The meltdown of Greenland’s ice sheet is speeding up, satellite measurements show. Data from a US space agency (Nasa) satellite show that the melting rate has accelerated since 2004. If the ice cap were to completely disappear, global sea levels would rise by 6.5m (21 feet).
This one from New Scientist
The Greenland ice sheet is all but doomed to melt away to nothing, according to a new modelling study. If it does melt, global sea levels will rise by seven metres, flooding most of the world’s coastal regions.
NASA’s Earth Observatory even has a regular section named “Greenland’s Ice Alarm.” In their August 28, 2007 edition they included the map below, which shows Greenland warming at 3°C per decade.
One has to wonder where their data comes from, because GISS shows that Greenland has not warmed at all over the last 90 years.
GISS temperature trends since 1920
Below is the GISS temperature graph for Godthab, Greenland. It was warmest around 1940, and the only recent warm years were from (you guessed it) 2003-2007. The Godthab pattern is fairly typical for Greenland and Iceland.
NASA’s Earth Observatory generated their 3C/decade trend by very carefully cherry-picking their start and end points. Tamino must be incensed by NASA’s behaviour, because he hates cherry-picking.
But you don’t hear so much about Greenland melting down any more.
Vol. 323. no. 5913, p. 458
FALL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION:
Galloping Glaciers of Greenland Have Reined Themselves In
Richard A. Kerr
Ice loss in Greenland has had some climatologists speculating that global warming might have brought on a scary new regime of wildly heightened ice loss and an ever-faster rise in sea level. But glaciologists reported at the American Geophysical Union meeting that Greenland ice’s Armageddon has come to an end.
Greenland warming of 1920–1930 and 1995–2005
Petr Chylek
M. K. Dubey
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
G. Lesins
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
We provide an analysis of Greenland temperature records to compare the current (1995–2005) warming period with the previous (1920–1930) Greenland warming. We find that the current Greenland warming is not unprecedented in recent Greenland history. Temperature increases in the two warming periods are of a similar magnitude, however, the rate of warming in 1920–1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995–2005.
Below is a video I took flying over Greenland from east to west on August 10, 2008 (peak melt season.) On the east side there were lots of icebergs and little evidence of any melt. As you traverse to the west side, you see a few melt ponds.
Temperatures have been running well below normal in Greenland this summer.
It is mid-summer and temperatures in the interior of the Greenland ice sheet are currently minus 16F. Temperatures never get above freezing for more than a few minutes there. Meanwhile temperatures in the interior of the East Antarctic ice sheet are close to minus 100F.
Every good citizen knows that the poles are melting – because they have been fed a continuous stream of gross misinformation. The press loves to print this stuff, but never makes any serious attempt to set the record straight later.
They can always recycle the ice shelf fracturing melting story a few more times.
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How does a mass of ice like Greenland suffer catastrophic melting if 95% of the place is below zero even in the summer?
In the mind of the hypnotized, anything is possible.
“Every good citizen knows that the poles are melting…”
Apparently from the bottom up. Current air temps are -26.4°C and current water temps are +5.2°C for the north pole.
http://coolwx.com/cgi-bin/findbuoy.cgi?id=25595
The BBC and New Scientist both gave up doing objective science years ago. There’s no surprise in their alarmist fairy stories. I await an objective article from Richard Black of the BBC.
I’m waiting.
Sera
Do you really believe the water at the North Pole was 12.6C yesterday? You might want to read this.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-468256/Briton-astounds-world-person-swim-North-Pole.html
Uhhh, I clicked the video and got a karate tourney? Good fun, but I doubt that happened in a fly-by over Greenland.
Dave F
Try clicking on the youtube play button at lower left.
rbateman says:
July 12, 2010 at 10:28 pm
How does a mass of ice like Greenland suffer catastrophic melting if 95% of the place is below zero even in the summer?
In the mind of the hypnotized, anything is possible.
***********************************
VILLABOLO:
Could it be that the other 5% is 5-9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer?
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100608_Figure4.png
Or how about those GRACE satellites that Anthony loves?
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/greenland_slide.html
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040222.shtml
By the way, blue is my favorite color.
http://www.amap.no/swipa/press2009/Press_Photo_15.jpg
http://www.amap.no/swipa/press2009/Press_Photo_3.jpg
REPLY: By the way, press photos with no provenance could be taken anywhere. It wouldn’t be the first time it has happened. Having been a member of the press for 25 years I cna tell you the couldn’t tell Antarctic from Greenland or the North Pole from an ice filed in Alaska. Just posting a couple of pictures of meltponds proves nothing unless they have factual context. Dates, locations, etc. -A
Sera says:
July 12, 2010 at 10:45 pm
“Every good citizen knows that the poles are melting…”
Apparently from the bottom up. Current air temps are -26.4°C and current water temps are +5.2°C for the north pole.
________
Even basic logic should tell you that those temperature figures you reported are so far off as to be laughable. For the actual temps, which are about 27 degrees C warmer in air temp than you reported, readers ought to check out:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/
And by the way (Steve), it’s clear, sunny, and showing a warming trend at the N. Pole right now, and despite your dire warnings last week that the melt ponds were freezing over, they are sparklin’ in the bright sunshine:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/latest/noaa2.jpg
I remember there was a stir a few years ago (start of 2007?) when a British survey team stood up at a conference and said the area they had been studying had abruptly stopped melting.
“It was like someone turned the tap off” was the take home quote. I rememeber they were ‘shouted down’ by the other conference goers. I’ve tried to find a reference to it since, but it seemed to have ‘disappeared’ from the web.
Anyone else remember?
villabolo
Obviously, none of the cities in Greenland are located on the ice sheet. They are all located near sea level, and the granite they are built on is not in any danger of melting down.
The only temperature station on the ice sheet is the one I reported in this story, currently at -16F.
http://www.summitcamp.org/status/weather/index?period=month
Haven’t you thought that it’s worse than anyone thought James Hansen thought?
The ice isn’t going to melt. It’s just going to jump into the sea, because there’s no floating ice holding up its weight:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/greenland-glacier-shrinks-overnight/
sera,
current air temps at 87°N are not -27°C, it stands for the longitude and the water temps at this region is of course not +xx degrees, because there is nothing but ice at this point all the years.
FergalR
The weight of the ice depresses the land below it, forming a bowl shape. Ice has about 1/3 the density of rock, so 10,000 feet of ice depress the land below it by more than 3,000 feet. (Isostasy.)
Have you ever seen ice cream jump out of a 3,000 foot deep bowl?
R. Gates
Cranking up the hyperbole a bit?
[no more posts until you address the Monckton issue]
villabolo
As mentioned in the article and video, there were a few melt ponds at lower elevations on the west side of Greenland in mid-August 2008.
Do you believe that your pictures somehow present contradictory information?
FergalR
That is what glaciers do in Greenland, they calve into the sea.
The Titanic was sunk by a huge chunk of ice that broke off a Greenland glacier.
stevengoddard says:
July 12, 2010 at 11:20 pm
[…]
Have you ever seen ice cream jump out of a 3,000 foot deep bowl?
———
No, but I’d like to.
“One has to wonder where their data comes from”
No you don’t; you can read their caption:
“Temperatures have been rising several degrees Celsius per decade (red areas) since 1981. … . (NASA Map by Robert Simmon, based on data from Josefino Comiso, GSFC.)”
And if you get the GISS plot for the period they are talking about (last thirty years), you can see that the trends are indeed large. They are about 1°C/decade, which is indeed what the map seems to show for the Greenland land area (more for SST).
All of the icebergs in the first three slides of the video were pieces of glacial ice that broke off of glaciers. Some are more than 1/4 mile across.
During the winter snow accumulates on the ice sheet, and the increased pressure causes the glaciers to flow to the sea. That is how equilibrium is maintained.
GRACE suggests that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is accelerating. How strange that you forgot to mention that.
tallbloke says:
July 12, 2010 at 11:11 pm
I remember there was a stir a few years ago (start of 2007?) when a British survey team stood up at a conference and said the area they had been studying had abruptly stopped melting.
“It was like someone turned the tap off” was the take home quote. I remember they were ‘shouted down’ by the other conference goers. I’ve tried to find a reference to it since, but it seemed to have ‘disappeared’ from the web.
Anyone else remember?
Yes, I remember the story, in particular the ‘tap off’ quote. But you are right, it seems to have vanished from the web.
richard telford
I have written about GRACE in the last two weeks. How strange that you forgot to mention that.
GRACE measures gravity, not ice thickness. Greenland is subject to large changes in elevation due to post-glacial rebound, and there are very few calibration points available away from the coast.
There is little reason to believe that some interpretations of the GRACE data wrt Greenland ice mass have much validity.
A buildup of 265 feet of ice since 1942.Yawn,Wake me up when it melts back to that level!
HERE;
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-1199461.html
” Eight southern pilots will begin an expedition to Greenland on Wednesday aimed at reaching one of eight aircraft buried deep in the icecap since crash-landing there during World War II.
Two B-17 bombers and six P-38 Lightning fighters are buried under 265 feet of ice and snow that has accumulated since bad weather and low fuel forced them to abort a flight to England in 1942.
The Greenland Expedition Society, headed by Atlanta architect Richard Taylor and Pat Epps, an aviation pioneer and owner of Epps Aviation, located the planes with subsurface radar and magnetometers last … “
Nothing unusual in the Arctic, nature is not static.
Why ?
Here is one answer:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1.htm