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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kuhnkat says:
July 13, 2010 at 8:25 pm
For the guys lovingly repeating that Grace is telling us the melt is accellerating, I would remind them that they found that Grace was overestimating the melt in the Western Antarctica. As they use the same satellite, sensors, and data processing routines I would expect them to overestimate Greenland melt also!!
Sorry to be a party pooper. 8>(
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Give us a link to see what you are talking about.
stevengoddard says:
July 13, 2010 at 6:45 am
John Cook,
Your post on your web site is a total straw man. Sea level is rising, and has been since the end of the last ice age. This is due to the ice sheets melting. Everyone understands this.
What is not happening is a “meltdown.” I am assuming that you have some competence with English? Are you honest enough to admit your error?
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Variation in sea level rise has been through out the past. An acceleration of ice melt and sea level averaged over time would be very indicative of rising temperatures on earth. It used to be argued that the sun was causing all this. During a solar minima and rising temperatures on earth, the sun is doing it all is gone.
Temperature and co2 sometimes go in different directions and sea level rise and ice melt vary. Radar and laser altimeter, and grace gravimetric measurements all come to the same powerful conclusion of accelerating ice loss.
stevengoddard says:
July 13, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Robert Lund
Given that Godthab temperatures are more than 1C cooler now than the were in the 1930s and 1940s, we must be on a very, very steep long term warming trend.
And I have never been more confident in World Cup referees.
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This wikipedia article has references that you can check into.
By this article Greenland is the warmest that it has been in the last 2000 years.
This is in spite of the earth actually heading towards cooling. The last 100 years are the warmest of the last 2000 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_the_Arctic#Greenland
A study published in the journal Science in September 2009 determined that temperatures in the Arctic are higher presently than they have been at any time in the previous 2,000 years.[1] Samples from ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments from 23 sites were used by the team, led by Darrell Kaufman of Northern Arizona University, to provide snapshots of the changing climate.[2] Geologists were able to track the summer Arctic temperatures as far back as the time of the Romans by studying natural signals in the landscape.[3] The results highlighted that for around 1,900 years temperatures steadily dropped, caused by precession of earth’s orbit that caused the planet to be slightly farther away from the sun during summer in the Northern Hemisphere.[1][2] These orbital changes led to a cold period known as the little ice age during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.[1][2] However, during the last 100 years temperatures have been rising, despite the fact that the continued changes in earth’s orbit would have driven further cooling.[1][2][4] The largest rises have occurred since 1950, with four of the five warmest decades in the last 2,000 years occurring between 1950 and 2000.[1] The last decade was the warmest in the record.[5]
Jeff Green says:
July 14, 2010 at 12:38 am
You seem to have forgotten to include the sac/off tag at the end there or are you seriously suggesting that we should prefer a Wikipedia compilation of a variety of paleoclimatological statistical fantasies over actual surface station records. I’m no big fan of the surface station record, but even I would take the worst real thermometer over the best set of tree rings or ice cores you can find on any day of the week.
oops! sarc/off
Who to trust??Hmmm!!I’ll go with here;
From the late John Daly and his timeless, brilliant website page “What the Stations Say”
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/Arctic.htm
Tide gauges for measuring tides have only been widely in use for about 100years. They were never intended to measure tides to the nearest mm, or to measure absolute tide height over decades. They usually consist of a simple float device attached to the side of a dock, with the purpose of monitoring the depth of water to ensure that ships are not grounded as they enter the dock. A mathematical computation is performed on the output of the tide gauge to remove the high frequency effect of waves to leave the low frequency tide signal.
There is every reason to believe that the docks to which the tide gauge is attached is unlikely to be perfectly stable over a period of 100years, and the most likely possibility is that the docks will, in almost every case, be slowly sinking into the earth beneath them. On top of that the accuracy of any ride gauge, given the method of operation and original purpose, is unlikely to be sufficient to monitor the sea level rise to the required degree. Furthermore, any tide guage is likely to be subject to the same problems of locality, relocation and replacement of functional parts that the surface stations are likely to have been exposed to.
I therefore submit that we currently have no long-term system of measurement that can be used to determine that the sea level is rising at all. I challenge anyone to prove otherwise.
As I have said several times – we have had 50 years of “accelerated global warming”, which is supposedly plenty of time to have observed the effects on sea level. If we have lost significant amounts of land to the sea due to this rise then the proponents of this theory must prove this by comparing maps pre-AGW to maps produced during the last 50 years. The fact that they refuse to undertake this simple and low-cost approach in favour of expensive satellites making observations of dubious accuracy says a lot about their real priorities and very little about the threat of AGW.
Jeff Green: July 13, 2010 at 11:52 pm
There’s no getting around it. Global warming theory is coming true. Night time minimum temperatures are rising. The number of record highs are now double the number of record lows. About 30 40 years ago it was about even. It goes on and on and on.
And on and on and on, just like the Energizer Bunny™.
Where’s the tropical atmospheric Hot Spot that *must* exist in order to prove the validity of the greenhouse gas global warming theory?
Jeff Green: July 13, 2010 at 11:52 pm
“There’s no getting around it. Global warming theory is coming true. Night time minimum temperatures are rising. The number of record highs are now double the number of record lows. About 30 40 years ago it was about even. It goes on and on and on.”
Jeff, do you really believe that, over the history of the world, there has never, ever been another 30-40 year period where the number of record highs were double the number of record lows? I would bet my house there was at least one 30-40 year period where the number of record highs were at least triple the number of record lows!
Can you not see the fallacy in your assertion?
Do you not understand that just because we have observed warming doesn’t mean we have determined the causation of the warming?
Can you truly be that naive Jeff?
Dave Wendt says:
July 14, 2010 at 1:37 am
Jeff Green says:
July 14, 2010 at 12:38 am
You seem to have forgotten to include the sac/off tag at the end there or are you seriously suggesting that we should prefer a Wikipedia compilation of a variety of paleoclimatological statistical fantasies over actual surface station records. I’m no big fan of the surface station record, but even I would take the worst real thermometer over the best set of tree rings or ice cores you can find on any day of the week.
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Nature itself gives us clues what is happening in the past. When it overlaps other fields of data how does it compare? Like you say, it has a level of uncertainty to it.
gravimetric data
laser altimetry
radar altimetry
temperature record
paleoclimatic data
sea level rise
As Steve points out these all have a level of uncertainty. And there in is the game and discussion. But all these data sets are showing and proving AGW is progressively true.
KD says:
July 14, 2010 at 5:51 am
Jeff Green: July 13, 2010 at 11:52 pm
“There’s no getting around it. Global warming theory is coming true. Night time minimum temperatures are rising. The number of record highs are now double the number of record lows. About 30 40 years ago it was about even. It goes on and on and on.”
Jeff, do you really believe that, over the history of the world, there has never, ever been another 30-40 year period where the number of record highs were double the number of record lows? I would bet my house there was at least one 30-40 year period where the number of record highs were at least triple the number of record lows!
Can you not see the fallacy in your assertion?
Do you not understand that just because we have observed warming doesn’t mean we have determined the causation of the warming?
Can you truly be that naive Jeff?
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I was asking how much of the literature you are reading. If you like you can add this to your list.
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/maxmin.jsp#
Bill Tuttle says:
July 14, 2010 at 3:07 am
Jeff Green: July 13, 2010 at 11:52 pm
There’s no getting around it. Global warming theory is coming true. Night time minimum temperatures are rising. The number of record highs are now double the number of record lows. About 30 40 years ago it was about even. It goes on and on and on.
And on and on and on, just like the Energizer Bunny™.
Where’s the tropical atmospheric Hot Spot that *must* exist in order to prove the validity of the greenhouse gas global warming theory?
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http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-Jo-Nova-doesnt-get-the-tropospheric-hot-spot.html
David Cook has a good article addressing the “Hot Spot” discussion.
KD
Since you spend a great deal of time studying the issue, skeptical science has an article that relates to this subject.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Part-One-Why-do-glaciers-lose-ice.html
Jeff Green
Given your suggested reading, you are implying that I am arguing that the number of high temperature records is NOT outpacing the number of record lows.
I’ll stipulate they are, even given that some of these record highs may be due to problems of poor siting of temperature stations (see the recent post on the “record high” at Carefree, Az) as opposed to actual new record high temperatures.
That we have more record highs than lows is not the issue. The issue is what is the cause? Is it natural climate variation or is it man-made? It is clear to me that there is not enough good, quality data available to make the case that it is man-made. Plenty of models, yes. Data, evidence, no.
In the absence of hard evidence, what you have is a theory. It may be a nice theory, but that is all it is. And basically I don’t believe in the theory.
To be direct, I don’t subscribe to the religion you are preaching.
KD says:
July 14, 2010 at 11:40 am
Jeff Green
Given your suggested reading, you are implying that I am arguing that the number of high temperature records is NOT outpacing the number of record lows.
I’ll stipulate they are, even given that some of these record highs may be due to problems of poor siting of temperature stations (see the recent post on the “record high” at Carefree, Az) as opposed to actual new record high temperatures.
I would refer you both to this old post
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/16/hall-of-record-ratios/
and most especially to this graph which is near the end
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_b5jZxTCSlm0/Sv31ZY99ioI/AAAAAAAAD38/zHZkCLYg590/s1600-h/image017.png
It’s a graph of of monthly maximum vs minimum records by decade and though it does show the ratio of max/min to have increased it also shows that in absolute numbers the climate seems to have become dramatically LESS extreme as the GAT has risen with the 2000s having fewer monthly records than any decade since the 1880s.
Jeff:
Hmmmn. You are arguing very forcefully that Greenland’s ice sheets are melting, because in fact, you must argue that way. It is the only “evidence” that CAGW remains such a drastic threat that justifies destroying the world’s economies to raise 1.3 trillion in new taxes to pay the governments’ worldwide bureaucrats. And their tame CAGW “scientists” who feed on that tax money. Hansen, after all, in the quote above is proclaiming a 5 meters sea rise in the next century due to Greenland ice melt – assuming also a continued doubling of a temperature increase that hasn’t happened at all.
A few things you must address:
Greenland is a large island: stretching from Lat 60 to past Lat 83 degrees north. (Equal to a northerly distance from Miami’s latitude 25 up to the south tip of Hudson Bay.)
The actual daily UNADJUSTED average temperatures for the entire arctic at latitude 80 from DMI from 1958 show a 0.0 change in summer temperature. That is, summer arctic temperatures – the ONLY time that ice can melt at Greenland’s latitude 80 for the past 50 years of increasing CO2 levels is nothing. 0. Nada. Therefore, on what basis has NASA to claim any rise (much less the ridiculous 3 degree per decade rise mentioned at the head of thread) in temperature in Greenland? What is the actual basis (which thermometers) for their claim?
The GPS vertical accelerations you are relying on to establish the movement of CENTRAL Greenland’s vertical land movement (hidden under 5000-some odd feet of glacier ice) were taken from a limited number of mountain top ridges on the east and west coasts. Justify a claim for any vertical movement measurements for the central part of Greenland – much less any “acceleration” over a decade when the baseline numbers do not exist. Can you claim that Ontario’s vertical movement is 1.1 mm per year – and is accelerating! – when you have measured the height of a mountaintop north of Atlanta?
Your theorectical justification for GRACE ice loss (land rebound movement upwards under a decreasing mass of central Greenland ice mass) is based on an assumption of a loss of ice mass. Planes that were on the surface of Greenland only 60 years ago are now submerged under 300 feet of solid ice. (That has NOT melted. Hint. Hint.) Therefore, falsify this theory with data: That 300 feet of new ice sicne 1945 has increased central Greenland ice mass enough to force down the middle of the island, thus driving up the exposed small mountain tops at both edges of the island. GRACE’s analysis fails because they falsely compensate for the assumed rocky uplift. Because they want the ice mass to be calculated as a loss. To do this, you must show what the actual baseline Greenland ice thickness across the island actually are now, and were back in 1945.
How many GPS sightings were actually made? Mann-made global warming graphs came from only hand-picked 19 tree rings from all of the tress from Murmask to Kamchatka.
(By the way, why don’t the mid-Pacific and South Atlantic islands properly plot under GRACE data as anomolies? Why don’t new mass intrusions of magma show as “rings” under those plots? Are we sure the minute values you think you are seeing are really there?)
Greenland has three regions of glacier ice: A two very, very thin bands of coastal glaciers less than 50 miles long up the eastern and western coasts; separated by a static (NOT MOVING) central plain of very deep ice up to 3000″ feet thick between the coastal mountain ranges. So describe that “catastrophic” melting scenario based on the actual “bowl” between the two mountain ranges that is greater than the distance from the Appalachian Mountains down to the vicinity of say Chicago and St Louis. Only both Chicago and St Louis are nearly the elevation of Denver. Now, just where is that ice supposed to “flow” so catastrophically? Yes, inland ice built up higher than the coastal mountain passes may go “out” over the passes towards sea-ward flowing glaciers, but what about the remaining 3000 feet depth – which shows no sign of anything but increasing depth over recorded history.
We are talking tens and hundred of years, not from year to year.
“The year 2010 so far, according to NASA, is the warmest on record for the globe, but also for Greenland. […] Anyway, winter 2009/2010 air temperatures, were a whopping 8.8 degrees C (15.8 degrees F) above normal.”
Why the situation in Greenland is so serious…
Per-Erik Skramstad says:
July 14, 2010 at 10:05 pm
We are talking tens and hundred of years, not from year to year.
“The year 2010 so far, according to NASA, is the warmest on record for the globe, but also for Greenland. […] Anyway, winter 2009/2010 air temperatures, were a whopping 8.8 degrees C (15.8 degrees F) above normal.”
Why the situation in Greenland is so serious…
—…—…
False. Measured actual daily Arctic temperatures (latitude 80) have NOT risen since 1958. If winter temperatures were higher than “normal” – and they were not – melt rates for ANY temperatures under 0,0 C are still zero for ANY ice over land.
But everyone knows that if the temprature is below feezing that catastrophic warming occurs!
Per-Erik Skramstad says:
July 14, 2010 at 10:05 pm
‘Why the situation in Greenland is so serious…’
An extract: ‘ When south Greenland was settled MORE THAN 1000 YEARS AGO, temperatures were warm like today. The primary cause of the warming then was due to earth’s orbit.’
Oh yeah? which orbital parameter was that that caused all the warming?
PS I liked your embedded Hurtigruten ads.
After closer review of the “glacier movement” (peer-reviewed) research paper above, it appears that they are trying to declare a movement theory for glaciers down a land-locked glacier valley from GPS studies of a single glacier exiting down and out an open valley by timing motion of its passage over a water-filled fjord.
Are the two different cases related that way?
Further, the broader case actually at hand for Greenland – that of a massive flat central plain bounded by two massive mountain ranges on all sides – bears NO relation to the study cited.
imho south and extreme southwestern Greenland is warming at sea level following the decline in the strength of the Gulf Stream in 2003-2004, which pushes a subsequent polar current down the east coast and up the west coast of Greenland. Speculations about ablation of the ice cap are merely speculations and the methodology NASA is using must be flawed because they aren’t really sharing it. Chances are good the temperature is decreasing on the ice cap overall. Low temperature isn’t sufficient to build ice, for that you need precipitation.
Warming at sea level is a fantastic boon for Greenlanders. It is not a disaster for anyone else.
The funny thing about recovering lost aircraft buried in the Greenland ice, mentioned above in a comment, is that the process gives the lie to conventional notions regarding ice-core data from Greenland that the ice forms in annual layers, like tree-rings. If you count “the rings” and know you are recovering a craft lost in 1945, the data don’t match.
The “meltdown” is forcing Inuit from their homeland … or so the deluded Stephen Pax Leonard of Cambridge University thinks:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/13/inuit-language-culture-threatened