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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I don’t know how you can conclude Greenland is not losing ice mass without looking at any actual ice mass measurements. There are a whole range of measurements to determine Greenland’s mass balance – satellites use altimetry to measure the speed of glaciers as they calve in the ocean, airborne laser altimetry and satellite measure ice sheet thickness, measurements of precipitation and ice discharge measure the net accumulation/loss, GPS receivers give us data on bedrock uplift and then there’s the GRACE gravity data. All these paint a clear, consistent picture of ice loss. For anyone who’s interested, I’ve posted a summary of the ice sheet measurements.
Hi Steven- guess I should learn to put /snark at the end. I’ve got two buoys on either side of the north pole showing air temps at -25°C. Water temps are all over the board, but all are in positive territory. So- is the north pole melting from the bottom up? What caused the ‘melt ponds’- sun, air temp, or water temp?
richard telford says:
July 13, 2010 at 1:08 am
(In contrast, glaciers in Austria have lost their accumulation area – no new snow remains, even at the top of the glaciers, at the end of the melt season. These glaciers cannot last long).
Last year I was standing on a snow field in the Sierras, August 20th. It got me curious, so I checked with the Dept of Forestry.
It’s like there’s permafrost underneath the glaciers, in a wide area surrounding them, covered by a thin veneer of soil and rock, even some of which are presented as poster children for global warming. They call them rock glaciers (pdf) , but they’re the frozen equivalent of aquafers.
Chances are good your glaciers are not going anywhere.
David Mayhew says:
July 13, 2010 at 2:50 am
The “good” thing about the Austrian melting is that it reveals traces of former human activity and exposes wood from trees which were present there earlier in this interglacial (radiocarbon dating etc) at heights above the current tree line.
This evidence suggests it that it was warmer then than now. Would you agree?
DFM
—————–
Europe (especially in the north) has been cooling through the mid-late Holocene because of orbital forcing. This is well known from multiple source of evidence (pollen, glacial reconstructions etc).
Be a little careful about arguing that it was warmer then than now because the current warm period is only a few decades old, and many of the indicators (esp trees) take much longer than this to establish and grow.
R. Gates says:
July 12, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Hi R.-
The first link you gave does not show AIR temps, but water temps. Your second link gives no info at all.
Here are air temps- pay attn to the lat/lon…
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=25593
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=48684
The way you know that the Greenland melting scare is over (for now) is by the reduction of scare stories over at the BBC, New Scientists and others. :o)
‘Melting’ in the Arctic is nothing new so why the unprecedented alarm.
Click, click, click, click, click, click, and click, click
Looks like this winter we might have cooling temps at both poles!
I just saw a video put out by the National Wildlife Federation showing, I believe, their officers and agents talking to the natives of a small ‘dying’ Greenland village about how their lives were being ruined by Global Warming — ‘fifty percent of the ice was melted’ — ‘the halibut were declining’ — ‘ the polar bears …’ etc. To me, this appears to be a clear case of noble cause troublemaking.
[denatured link]
REF: http: // www . green . tv / nwf_greenland_day3
As several people have pointed out here (and elsewhere) the temperature at the centre of the ice sheet has little or nothing to do with the loss of ice mass in Greenland.
It is rising temperatures of the air and water at the tongue of a glacier that will cause it to move quicker.
So what are the current air temperatures around Greenland?
See here:
http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm
Click on the yellow dots to get the latest weather station readings.
Currently the most northerly weather station near Greenland, Alert, is reading +5c (+41f) on the Arctic sea ice.
Others on the Greenland coast are:
THULE: +11c
SØNDRE STRØMFJORD: +11C
NUUK: +7C
I am not stating that these temps are in any way anomolous, just showing that it is plenty warm enough on the Greenland coast to melt ice.
So, despite the fact that it may be much colder in the interior, if it is warmer at the periphery then the ice will move quicker. It is suggested that this is now quicker than it can be replaced by accumulation in the interior. Not suggesting this is or isn’t the case, just that it is possible, even if very cold temperatures persist in the interior of Greenland.
Also, despite the fact that the interior terrain may be “bowl” shaped, the top of the glaciers covering it are way higher than sea level so there is inevitably a weight of ice pushing outward in all directions – and without anything to stop it, the ice naturally “slumps”. In fact this is what it is doing all the time, but accummulation in the centre replaces the ice lost at the periphery.
On another point discussed under the GRACE topic posted earlier, Steven suggested it would take thousands of years for movement at the sea end of a glacier to be reflected in any movement at the interior.
A thought experiment for you. Place a 1m long sheet of polished steel at an angle of 5 deg. Spread butter on it and put a row of 50 x 10mm gold coins on it in a line with the top edge of the line touching the upper edge of the sheet (represeenting the interior of the glacier). The bottom end of the row of coins will then be 500mm from the bottom edge of the sheet. The coins are stuck together along a piece of elastic band (representing the forces bonding the sections of ice in a glacier together).
Under the pull of gravity, the row of gold coins slides very slowly down the slope over time, lubricated by the butter. Let us say that it takes 10 hours for the bottom end of the row to touch the bottom edge of the sheet. In that case it is moving at 50mm an hour.
How long after the bottom edge of the row of coins starts moving would it be before the top coin started to move?
According to Steven’s logic in the GRACE posting, it would take 10 hours because the row is 500mm long and it is moving at 50mm an hour.
However, it is clear to even the most dim witted that the top coin would move instantaneously!
A glacier is very like that.
Now, using some heat source (match or candle) gently warm the sheet under the first 5 coins, melting the butter and reducing the friction. This will cause them to move quicker and pull on the elastic band.
How long after the bottom 5 coins starts to speed up would it be before the top coin started to speed up?
Probably almost instantaneously, but it depends on the elasticity of the elastic band.
How well connected are the sections of ice in a glacier connected? I do not know the answer to that question, but common sense suggests reasonably tightly bonded, in which case I would expect the whole glacier, from one end to the other, to speed up almost simultaneously.
And that is what GRACE seems to show.
Here are the buoys with water temp…
http://coolwx.com/cgi-bin/findbuoy.cgi?id=25594
http://coolwx.com/cgi-bin/findbuoy.cgi?id=25595
http://coolwx.com/cgi-bin/findbuoy.cgi?id=26559
http://coolwx.com/cgi-bin/findbuoy.cgi?id=65901
Andrew P. says:
July 12, 2010 at 11:56 pm (Edit)
tallbloke says:
July 12, 2010 at 11:11 pm
“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.
Nothing short of Kafka-esque. I wonder what else they got funded to do afterwards… Breaking rocks open in Siberia probably…
Unfortunately, the BBC has its own biases and agenda as regards Global Warming. In 2007 it reported that the arctic would be ice free in summer by 2013, a prediction which appears stupider and stupider as 2013 approaches.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7139797.stm
“Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,” the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. “So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative”
The only redeeming feature for the BBC comes in interview with Gert Leipold, executive director Greenpeace, who is caught in a lie about Greenland ice sheet disappearing within 20 years and has to back down. This should be a lesson to the BBC that with some persistence, rather than subservient acquiescence, they can expose the lies and exaggerations that these so-called ‘environmental’ organisations deal in.
Leipold then tries to defend his lie by saying that “ As a pressure group, we have to emotionalise issues and we’re not ashamed of emotionalising issues.”
R Gates and Villabolo
I am a little confused as to your position here.
There have undoubtedly been great arctic melting events before now. The period 1920-1940 and 1820 to 1860 are very well documented. I have some fifty articles on the former as I am currently writing an article on this. Additional melting occurred in the 1700’s and 1400’s and we all know about the Vikings around 1000AD and the Ipiatuk a thousand years before them.
To clarify your position please indicate one of the scenarios indicated below as most closely agreeing with your position
1)Are you saying that NONE of the above melting events happened?
2) Are you saying you just didn’t know about them?
3) Are you saying that todays melting is unprecedented in our recorded history? If so please give your evidence for that?
Thank you
Tonyb
R. Gates: July 12, 2010 at 11:09 pm
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:
The pic you linked is from the JAMSTEC Buoy (POPS-13) located at 86°08″39′ N (not quite the North Pole, but close), 01°08″12′ W. The temperature is a toasty +1.6°C, but the trend you mention looks like normal daytime/nighttime temperature variation.
However, when you get a bit closer to the Pole, say 88°14″01′ N, 10°09″86′ W (the IABP PAWS Buoy), it gets a tad nippier — 0.1°C. And it’s downright chilly at 88°07″04′ N, 09°06″38′ W (the CRREL IMB Buoy) -0.05°C.
BTW, how’d your “This will be the warmest May/June on record!” prediction work out?
Greenland loses 50% of its ice through calving glaciers, lets see your discussion of this goddard? Start giving unbiased assessments.
Warmists always jump to conclusions about Greenland ‘melting’. We know it’s not unprecedented as there are frozen farms there today as well as dead frozen tree trunks. Other things to consider in the so called ‘melt‘.
—
—
richard telford: July 13, 2010 at 3:20 am
Europe (especially in the north) has been cooling through the mid-late Holocene because of orbital forcing. This is well known from multiple source of evidence (pollen, glacial reconstructions etc).
Be a little careful about arguing that it was warmer then than now because the current warm period is only a few decades old, and many of the indicators (esp trees) take much longer than this to establish and grow.
So, if it was *not* warmer in the back-when, what’s your theory about how structures and vegetation wound up beneath the glaciers, only to be exposed by the glaciers’ current retreat?
Matthew L says:
Where did you find all that rubbish. Give us some ‘peer reviews’.
The key questions : Is the ice in a deep basin, what incline is it on, what is the coeff of friction between the ice and the bedrock ( clue here is that glaciers grind rock), why would the temp at the surface of the ice affect the rate of movement, what is the length of the glacier and is it moving at the same speed over its’ entire length, etc etc.
Robert says
is this 50% of the actual loss each year? if so I’d love to see how they measure that. I suspect it’s the proverbial doight à l’air
Is there something odd in the NASA’s report:
Image left: Marco Tedesco summarizes the trend of the melting index in Greenland between 1988 and 2007 by showing a plot of how many surface size of the U.S. match the melting index observed each year of his study. Credit: NASA/Marco Tedesco and Luisa Valle
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2007/greenland_recordhigh.html
? !
Greenland area: 2,166,086 sq km
USA area : 9,826,675 sq km
[snip] – unsubstantiated attribution of motive. RT-mod
Here’s some ACTUAL data;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nioghalvfjerdsbrae
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachariae_Isstrom
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2010193/crefl1_143.A2010193203000-2010193203500.250m.jpg
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2010194/crefl2_143.A2010194065500-2010194070000.250m.jpg
I’m M-E-L-T-I-N-G!
Robert
Snow falls in the interior. The extra weight forces the glaciers to move towards the sea. When they reach the sea, they calve icebergs. The great circle of life, Little Foot.
Try taking a physical geology 101 class at your local community college. It is one of the first things they will teach you.
Matthew L
Your assumption that the bulk of ice is resting on a downwards slope is incorrect. It is sitting in a deep deep isostatic depression, punctuated by ridges and mountains. The ice in the interior does not slide along the ground, rather it flows in response to increased weight of winter snow.
What if icebergs never calved into the sea? What would the interior of Greenland look like today? I see glaciers as slowly moving rivers – they have to go somewhere! Then when they do we get alarmist stories:o)
stevengoddard says:
July 13, 2010 at 5:04 am (Edit)
The ice in the interior does not slide along the ground, rather it flows in response to increased weight of winter snow.
Spot on Steven. How do the warmies think glaciers went about their normal business of calving into the sea before man set fire to coal anyway?
Matthew L says:
July 13, 2010 at 3:51 am
Bearing in mind the topography of Greenland, as stated above, there is clearly not a continuous downhill run from the head of the glaciers to the sea. I suggest you retry your experiment by bending the polished steel so that it actually represents a cross section of the underlying terrain. Oh, and while you are at it, you might replace the polished steel with something a little more like rock, and with the same thermal conductivity as rock.
I don’t think glaciers move by heat conducted through the ground fom the warm end of the glacier causing increased melting under the length of the glacier. If anything, I would expect high temperatures at the foot of the glacier to cause it (the foot) to recede not for the movement of the glacier to speed up, but then I am only applying logic.
And if you want my suggestion for an experiment (without the expense of the gold coins because only well funded AGW scientists can afford them), lay a block of ice on a gently sloping lump of unpolished rock and play a blowtorch on one end, then let us know what happens.