You may recall the bogus claim of “97% of Greenland Ice melted”, that was dialed back (REP’s last story on WUWT). Now there’s more of the same sort of stuff. See this PR, and note my bold for the money quote.
From the City College of New York
Greenland melting breaks record 4 weeks before season’s end
Melting over the Greenland ice sheet shattered the seasonal record on August 8 – a full four weeks before the close of the melting season, reports Marco Tedesco, assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at The City College of New York.
The melting season in Greenland usually lasts from June – when the first puddles of meltwater appear – to early-September, when temperatures cool. This year, cumulative melting in the first week in August had already exceeded the record of 2010, taken over a full season, according to Professor Tedesco’s ongoing analysis.
“With more yet to come in August, this year’s overall melting will fall way above the old records. That’s a goliath year – the greatest melt since satellite recording began in 1979,” said Professor Tedesco.
This spells a change for the face of southern Greenland, he added, with the ice sheet thinning at its edges and lakes on top of glaciers proliferating.
Professor Tedesco noted that these changes jibe with what most of the models predict – the difference is how quickly this seems to be happening.
To quantify the changes, he calculated the duration and extent of melting throughout the season across the whole ice sheet, using data collected by microwave satellite sensors.*
This ‘cumulative melting index’ can be seen as a measure of the ‘strength’ of the melting season: the higher the index, the more melting has occurred. (The index is defined as the number of days when melting occurs multiplied by the total area subject to melting.)
Dr. Thomas Mote, Professor of Geography at the University of Georgia and colleague of Professor Tedesco, confirmed that the cumulative melt in 2012 had surpassed that of 2010 using a similar analysis.
The August 8th record differs from NASA’s announcement of unprecedented melting in mid-July, reported by Professor Tedesco and other researchers. Then, they found that the Greenland ice sheet had melted over 97 percent of its surface.
“That event was exceptional in the sense that it was an extremely rare event,” said Professor Tedesco. “Imagine Rio de Janeiro under a layer of snow and you get the idea.”
The extreme melting detected in mid-July, on the other hand, generated liquid water that refroze after a few days. “This changed the physical properties of the snowpack – making a slushy layer that turned into an icy crust after refreezing – but very likely it did not add to the runoff of meltwater that makes sea levels rise.”
The cumulative melting index, on the other hand, does account for water flowing to the ocean. The same meltwater can affect ice dynamics by lubricating the base of the ice sheet and speeding its slide toward the sea.
This year, Greenland experienced extreme melting in nearly every region – the west, northwest and northeast of the continent – but especially at high elevations. In most years, the ice and snow at high elevations in southern Greenland melt for a few days at most. This year it has already gone on for two months.
“We have to be careful because we are only talking about a couple of years and the history of Greenland happened over millennia,” cautioned Professor Tedesco. “But as far as we know now, the warming that we see in the Artic is responsible for triggering processes that enhance melting and for the feedback mechanisms that keep it going. Looking over the past few years, the exception has become part of the norm.”
* The National Snow and Ice Data Center provided satellite data from the United States Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.
The NASA Cryospheric Sciences Program and the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored this research.
Note: An upcoming paper submitted by Professor Tedesco and his colleagues examines the losses and gains that the Greenland ice sheet could experience, as projected through the end of the 21st Century according to different CO2-level scenarios.
Online:
Greenland Melting www.greenlandmelting.com
Video: Bridge destruction over Watson River, Greenland, likely a consequence of cumulative melting. (Filmed by M.Tedesco) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKjXKAatiIs
NASA Release: Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/greenland-melt.html
===========================================================
This quote…
“That event was exceptional in the sense that it was an extremely rare event,” said Professor Tedesco. “Imagine Rio de Janeiro under a layer of snow and you get the idea.”
In juxtaposition with this one:
“That’s a goliath year – the greatest melt since satellite recording began in 1979.”
…has to be one of the most ridiculous ones I’ve ever seen.
How rare? Well professor, show me the records of such melts prior to satellite monitoring and you might have an argument. Greenland melts every summer. How many summer in the past 1000 years have such levels of melt? I don’t think he can tell us. Is a 1 in 30 year event “rare”?
As for the reason, I think this figures in:
I refer you to this photograph of a Moulin in Greenland:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/03/greenland-ground-zero-for-global-soot-warming/
Image from National Geographic online slide show – Photo: James Balog – click for moreBalog writes:
In the winter a huge among of snow are accumulated on the Ice (2-3 meters, sometimes more) and we are not talking about 1 or 2 square-miles, it’s about 100.000′s of square miles (up to 1 million) on the Westside of the Ice cap and a similar picture on the Eastside… when the melting season starts in april-sep… the meltwater has to go somewhere, and for sure it goes downhill in huge meltwater rivers.
The black stuff on the bottom of the lakes is carbon dust and pollution in general… but not from one year, but several decades (the topographical conditions don’t change from year to year). On a flight over the Ice Cap a sky clear day, you can see hundreds of huge lakes with the black spot on the bottom.
See this experiment with soot on snow done by meteorologist Michael Smith of WeatherData where soot made a huge difference.
No wonder it’smelting with all of those microwave satellites pointing at it all day long…
REPLY: I know you meant to add /sarc but I have to point out (for those humorless anonymous haters out there like Rattus Norvegicus) that will point to it and and say “See? stoopid!” that it is passive microwave radiation emanating from the area observed, not an active scan like radar. Even if it were active scan, due to inverse square law we’d be talking milliwatts to microwatts per square meter. Hardly enough to make a difference. – Anthony
And while I’m at it, couldn’t all those greenies up there not just clean all the muck out from the bottom of those pools? I mean, for the sake of the planet?
(/sarc unfortunately probably required for some…)
There was far less ice there when the Vikings were farming Greenland for a period of 500 years beginning approx 1000AD.
Haven’t the Iceland volcanoes been rather active of late?
How much of the ash from them makes it to Greenland, and how much does this affect melting?
Alle schnee is gruene, nicht wiese.
In the 17 century, in the Little Ice Age, ice volume increased. globally.
… now we have higher temp levels and we MUST observe that this ice is
melting…
…..A complete normality with nothing alarming in it……. It is just a reversing
of the freezing process 300 years ago….. because we are on a global temp
level higher than in the 17 century…..
Alarming would be if global ice volume did not shrink…. We are back to normal
concerning the Arctic ice volume…. until it will grow again with the advance of the
next glacial time…..JS
The Vikings suffered alot when global warming reached Greeenland. And now the Scanidavians are next in the norse disaster-line. Sweden’s highest mountain has gained 200 cm since last year. It’s hot, hot, hot!
http://norran.se/2012/08/norrbotten/kebnekaise-ar-hogre-an-vanligt/
“This year, Greenland experienced extreme melting in nearly every region – the west, northwest and northeast of the continent – but especially at high elevations. In most years, the ice and snow at high elevations in southern Greenland melt for a few days at most. This year it has already gone on for two months.”
I thought there was a graph that showed over the course of July this year there were maybe 5 days where, for a brief period of the day, the temperature exceeded 32F. That this happens over a period of two months doesn’t mean there is thawing for two months. Also, weren’t these thawing events supposed to be happening roughly every 150 years or so and the melt this year is, according to the author of that July melt paper, just about right on schedule?
I guess the rest of us have NEVER noticed the snow melting faster around the dog crap, bird doodoo or any other messy mass that is not as white as the pure driven snow.
Thank goodness Mike’s experiment will also be featured on Roger Pielke Senior’s blog. Nice! (extra SARC) Maybe there is some handsome grant money available to throw various dark objects onto some backyard snow. (Measure stick not included)
I hate to be so old school about this, but I see any evidence that we aren’t spiraling into another ice age as something to be optimistic about rather than something to dread.
How do the Greenlanders feel about this extra melting? Is it a bad thing for them?
Hasn’t this been mostly debunked on earlier threads here? Fr instance, Greenland is a bowl, and this lubrication idea isn’t how it really works very much anyway.
“The black stuff on the bottom of the lakes is carbon dust and pollution in general”
Has anyone actually sampled the material on the bottom of those lovely ponds? Not necessarily needed since the “stuff” is also found in any shovel of snow. I always thought snow was/is dirty. Probably always has been in areas where the prevailing weather (climate) lifts ground dust into the atmosphere. Maybe Antartica snow is cleaner than Greenland snow. Soon to be renamed Blackstuff Isle, or Carbondustlante. And why is the “stuff” “pollution in general?” Its hard to find any body of water that has a virgin bottom. And do those same ponds reemerge every year to accumulate an ever-growing amount of “stuff?”
So how does this leave the ice covered Viking farmland ? that is a real world comparison, and who in their right mind would want the glaciers back to their full extent say in 1800?
Rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet was observed in the period 1935-1955 too, see:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm05/fm05-sessions/fm05_C41A.html last paragraph:
“To address this issue, we compiled a history of surface elevation changes of Jakobshavn Isbrae since the LIA. We first combined data from historical records, ground surveys, airborne laser altimetry, and field mapping of lateral moraines and trimlines. This record shows two periods of rapid thinning by about 70 meters, in the early 1950s and since 1997… [snip] …Nevertheless, aerial photographs collected in the 1940s and 50s indicate that thinning extended far inland.”
Further, the Greenland summer temperatures in the previous warm period were higher than in the recent past, see:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/greenland_temp.html
But I need to extend the trend over the most recent years.
Steve R says:
August 15, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Agreed, but we just know they’re comparing to the microwave soundings from the MWP and early 20th century, so we have to be scared!
DaveE.
Nordenskiolds greenland expedition 1883
Melt river on the ice.
http://runeberg.org/polexp1883/0226.html
Water melt holes on the ice, some with black dust on bottom.
http://runeberg.org/polexp1883/0244.html
Map ower the in land ice expedition from Disco bay.
Altitude in meters.
Left map part.
http://runeberg.org/polexp1883/0233.html
Middle part.
http://runeberg.org/polexp1883/0234.html
Right part.
http://runeberg.org/polexp1883/0235.html
“The summer climate in the North Atlantic about the year 1000”
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/vinland/othermysteries/climate/4157en.html
“Roots of plants and deep Viking graves found in South Greenland in soil that is now tjaele (permafrost or permanently frozen ground) indicate that the annual mean temperature must have been 2-4°C warmer than now.”
Source: Knud Frydendahl, “The summer Climate in the North Atlantic about the Year 1000” in Viking Voyages to North America, Birthe L. Clausen (Denmark: Kannike Tryk A/S, 1993), 90-94.
rogerknights says:
August 15, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Yep! In Warmish nightmares, Greenland is a partially uncovered bowling ball and when the ice loses its grip – Kazaam!
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2012/WEBCAM1/ARCHIVE/npeo_cam1_20120815140422.jpg
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2012/WEBCAM2/ARCHIVE/npeo_cam2_20120815124017.jpg
And the arctic melt ponds seem to be turning a whiter shade of pale. Isn’t this about four weeks earlier that the near past years?
Even if it were active scan, due to inverse square law we’d be talking milliwatts to microwatts per square meter. Hardly enough to make a difference. – Anthony
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ah, but you’ve forgotten all those cell phones, millions upon millions of cell phones, each putting out a watt or so. Plus the cell towers themselves. Plus all those broadcast radio and television stations, plus the broadcast satellites we pick up on our satellite dishes. Carnage I say! Watts everywhere!
/SARC!
(I don’t usually add the /sarc to my comments as I rely on my wording to make it self evident, but in this case, I thought I’d better go with convention)
““We have to be careful because we are only talking about a couple of years and the history of Greenland happened over millennia,” cautioned Professor Tedesco. “But as far as we know now, the warming that we see in the Artic is responsible for triggering processes that enhance melting and for the feedback mechanisms that keep it going. Looking over the past few years, the exception has become part of the norm.””
So look at the Danish temperatures here — http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
What warming?
It would appear that the soot that Anthony points out is a far more likely reason for melt as the air temperatures are well within the normal range (you can go back looking at other dates too).
As the coastal ice in Greenland melted it disclosed farms so one can hardly say it is unprecedented melting. Is the good professor and friend in Georgia really that ignorant? Or are things carefully weasel worded to get published and retain funding?
The melt figures for Greenland match the weather data. WeatherOnline shows that stations such as Nuuk and Scoresbysund have seen well above normal temperatures this summer with few days even recording maxima at average or below – almost every day of the summer has been above normal. Narsarsuaq has seen many clusters of days in the high teens and low twenties C – normal for July is about 14C. So its no wonder there has been a big melt this year.
NOAA report that for land temperatures
“Notably, it was the warmest July on record for the Northern Hemisphere, where the majority of Earth’s land mass is located. This is the fourth month in a row that the Northern Hemisphere has set a new monthly land temperature record.”
Its not hype – its happening.
Its worth noting that Lora Koenig, a Nasa Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data, said that “ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19269571
Are they sure all that soot is not from the evil Vikings Suv’s,tractors,and steel plants that were operating there 700 years ago,when they were farming?
Surely there is a smart,young lawyer out there somwhere who wants to make a name for themslves by starting to sue these clowns for fraud?