Greenland glaciers – melt due to sea current change, not air temperature

My favorite caveats!!!!…”suspected mechanisms”….”difficult to confirm”?
And, of course the obligatory career enhancing ……“We need more continuous observations to fully understand how they work, and to be able to better predict sea-level rise in the future,” says Straneo.
These guys at Woods Hole are soooo gooooood.

Temperatures are much warmer in the NW Atlantic this year: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/02/17/nl-cains-cancelled-170210.html

“Almost all of us skeptics at this site acknowledge that after the MWP (medieval warm period) there was an LIA (little ice age) since which time (1600’s or so) there has been a long term trend of global warming, with various cycles of warming and cooling related either to solar cycles or ocean oscillations or both superimposed. So we expect that “baseline” temps a hundred years ago may be slightly cooler than current temps (although we have also learned that upward measurement bias in temps due to siting and urbanization issues mess up the data).”
Some people acknowledge that there is a warming trend, and some (like the person who challenged me on it) do not. Once we agree that there’s a warming trend, the question is what is causing it.
While the UHI has been proposed as a cause of measured warming, the data has stamped rather heavily on that supposition:
Assessment of Urban Versus Rural In Situ Surface Temperatures in the Contiguous
United States: No Difference Found
THOMAS C. PETERSON
National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, North Carolina
(Manuscript received 26 May 2002, in final form 23 February 2003)
ABSTRACT
All analyses of the impact of urban heat islands (UHIs) on in situ temperature obser vations suffer from inhomogeneities or biases in the data. These inhomogeneities make urban heat island analyses difficult and can lead to erroneous conclusions. To remove the biases caused by differences in elevation, latitude, time of observation, instrumentation, and nonstandard siting, a variety of adjustments were applied to the data. The resultant data were the most thoroughly homogenized and the homogeneity adjustments were the most rigorously evaluated and thoroughly documented of any large-scale UHI analysis to date. Using satellite night-lights–derived urban/ rural metadata, urban and rural temperatures from 289 stations in 40 clusters were compared using data from 1989 to 1991. Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures. It is postulated that this is due to micro- and local-scale impacts dominating
over the mesoscale urban heat island. Industrial sections of towns may well be significantly warmer than rural sites, but urban meteorological observations are more likely to be made within park cool islands than industrial regions.
So the UHI does not appear to be a significant source of measured warming. And obviously the satellite data shows warming as well.
As to whether this is a normal recovery from the LIA: to resolve that, there’s no getting around the hockey stick (which is to say, temperature reconstructions of the last 1,000 years). While there are a few scientists who still believe in a global MWP comparable to present warming, for the most part, the reconstructions agree that the 20th century warming is anomalous in the last thousand years.
While some people use the data on the MWP to argue for an as-yet unknown natural process causing the warming, I feel this is a non-parsimonious explanation. We know GHGs cause a greenhouse effect — that has been known for a couple of centuries, since long before any “controversy.” We know that, because of human activity, there are more of these GHGs in the atmosphere than there used to be. The most commonsensical explanation is that the GHGs and the warming are connected, not seperate, phenomena, and since we know what’s causing the elevations in GHGs, the warming is most likely the effect of that increase.

“Melting ice also means more fresh water in the ocean, which could flood into the North Atlantic and disrupt a global system of currents, known as the Ocean Conveyor. (Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)”
Yeah, and the tooth fairy might leave a million dollars under my pillow.
Can they demonstrate an historic precident for such disruption, aside from the Lake Agassiz or Baltic floods?

vigilantfish (21:55:27) :
“Actually, I hate to play devil’s advocate here but … MSc thesis … the early 20th century fishermen, sealers and other witnesses …”
An MSc thesis is drawn from papers with either derived or first hand data, and there is a selection process involved. The fishermen and sealers provide first hand data, and they are directly concerned about where to find their money.

Robert,
Please explain exactly how the data was homogenized by Patterson at NCDC – we are all intensely curious as to how this process is carried out… As you are doubtless aware most of us are skeptical of the processes used and the agenda of those who are performing this work.
Homogenization is a process invented for creating a stable configuration in milk, in which fat globules are evenly suspended throughout the lighter skim-milk. For those of us who have had the privilege of drinking unhomogenized milk in the past, there is a clear recognition that the raw product is very different from the homogenized version, with a lovely layer of cream that floats on top of the milk. Is the milk identical to the cream? Hardly! I suspect that the term used in Peterson’s paper to describe the manipulated data conveys a confession as to how well the results reflect the reality conveyed by the actual data record.

“Please explain exactly how the data was homogenized by Patterson at NCDC – we are all intensely curious as to how this process is carried out”
I’d suggest reading the paper — no doubt it has a methods section.
Looking at the abstract, it appears that in referring to “Homogenization” he’s talking about what the medical literature usually calls regression analysis. In lay terms, that means taking into account all the other things that can mess with temperature readings “differences in elevation, latitude, time of observation, instrumentation, and nonstandard siting,” to isolate the supposed UHI effect.
“As you are doubtless aware most of us are skeptical of the processes used and the agenda of those who are performing this work.”
I think genuine skepticism is directed at things we want to believe in — things that further your own “agenda” of discrediting the theory of AGW. The capacity to doubt your own theories, and imagine you might be wrong, is the characteristic of a truly skeptical mind. Being intensely suspicious of those that tell us things that we don’t want to hear is an example of confirmation bias, not skepticism.

Didn’t Bill Nye say that global warming was going to screw up the thermohaline circulation and maybe even shut down the Gulf Stream?

ZOMG… Could Bill Nye be wrong? Could 100,000 to 1 Richard Lindzen be right?

” savethesharks (23:41:23) :
Pure sophistry. Folks this is a spin artist at work.”
I know you intend this as a criticism of me, but given what follows, it reads more like a disclaimer for the rest of your post.
Reply:This is a warning to be savethesharks and Robert. Tone it down. Personal attacks on other commenters are strongly frowned upon here. And as always. I don’t care who started it. ~ ctm

Robert,
“So the UHI does not appear to be a significant source of measured warming,”
Unconvincing argument since it uses the same homogenisation that have been criticized in the CRU and GISS reconstructions. In othe words – a tautology.
Fact: Raw data from rural sites do not show a warming trend in the lower 48 states, whereas raw data from urban sites do.
“While there are a few scientists who still believe in a global MWP comparable to present warming.”
A few – like 805 Scientists from from 478 research institutions in 43 different countries contributing to a body of knowledge over 50 years in the making. In would be more accurate to point to the few scientists who don’t believe in a global MWP.
“for the most part, the reconstructions agree that the 20th century warming is anomalous in the last thousand years.”
In order to accept the evidence of a few debunked hockey stick studies while willfully ignoring the mountain of contrary evidence suggests a mind that is closed to facts.
“While some people use the data on the MWP to argue for an as-yet unknown natural process causing the warming, I feel this is a non-parsimonious explanation.”
Some people argue that because compute models cannot reproduce 20th century warming without CO2 forcing and feedbacks, then AGW must be real. I call that an argumentum ignoratium. If, as nearly everyone willing to open their eyes can see, climate has varied constantly and unfailingly on every time scale, without human caused CO2 driving it, then this “unknown” mechanism must, in fact, exist. If it existed then, then it must exist now.
The scientific method is actually pretty simple. Observations tell us that climate has varied and was warmer 1000 years ago during the MWP, the Roman warm period before that and the Minoan warm period before that. You start by trying to reject the null hypothesis – that modern warming is different from any of the others such that another explanation is required. The null hypothesis can only be rejected if the hockey stick reconstruction was real, something even Phil Jones is trying to distance himself from. That’s why the MWP was called “putative,” – it knocks a pillar out from the AGW hypothesis.

“”” vukcevic (12:12:08) :
George E. Smith (10:15:19) :
“So I wonder what Svend Hendriksen (A Nobel Peace Prize Winning Glaciologist, who lives in Greenland) thinks about this research. I am sure he is familiar with the basic variables of this location and situation.”
Mr Hendriksen appears not only be top Nobel Peace Prize Winning Glaciologist, but also interested in art controversies:
extract: Greenland Art Review © 2010
Published 14-02-2010 11:21 by S. E. Hendriksen
Was ‘Art fraudsters’ self-deceived?
If Svend Erik Olsen and Jannie From the ‘art scammers and fraudsters’, so their plan is only starting to take shape now that the trial is over. If they have a ‘plan’, then it is so advanced a few people have noticed it yet. Eastern High Court misunderstood the matter entirely, but is an excellent means for couples’ ‘future’ claim of 30 million. Sterling …
(google translation)
Med venlig hilsen
Greenland Art Review
V/ Svend Erik Hendriksen
Nobel Peace Prize 1988 (Collectively) etc
http://www.glar.gl/ “””
Svend is a very nice chap; and very knowledgeable about glaciers both in Greenland where he lives most of the time; but also in Antarctica. And since those polar orbit satellites fly over both, he can get pictures and stuff from either end of the earth dropped down to him when the bird goes over his place. And he lives out in the boonies, not some bustling big city with traffic lights. He can also educate us on just what those breaking up Antarctic ice shelves are really doing; and the stuff he has sent me in the past suggests they break up all the time. The piece of the most recent big fuss Wilkins break-off; has a nearby thinner piece that clearly broke up around 50 years ago; and is still recovering its former thickness.