From the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) some “could be might be” research with a possible conclusion. I wonder why there doesn’t seem to be evidence for a complete melt long ago in this paper: New study shows temperature in Greenland significantly warmer than present several times in the last 4000 years. And I laughed out loud at this line: “In contrast, if global warming would be limited to 2 degrees Celsius, complete melting would happen on a timescale of 50.000 years.” Amazing how that 2°C lines up with with activist memes, doesn’t it? Oh, and Milankovitch cycles, natch.
The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be more vulnerable to global warming than previously thought. The temperature threshold for melting the ice sheet completely is in the range of 0.8 to 3.2 degrees Celsius global warming, with a best estimate of 1.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels, shows a new study by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Today, already 0.8 degrees global warming has been observed. Substantial melting of land ice could contribute to long-term sea-level rise of several meters and therefore it potentially affects the lives of many millions of people.
The time it takes before most of the ice in Greenland is lost strongly depends on the level of warming. “The more we exceed the threshold, the faster it melts,” says Alexander Robinson, lead-author of the study now published in Nature Climate Change. In a business-as-usual scenario of greenhouse-gas emissions, in the long run humanity might be aiming at 8 degrees Celsius of global warming. This would result in one fifth of the ice sheet melting within 500 years and a complete loss in 2000 years, according to the study. “This is not what one would call a rapid collapse,” says Robinson. “However, compared to what has happened in our planet’s history, it is fast. And we might already be approaching the critical threshold.”
In contrast, if global warming would be limited to 2 degrees Celsius, complete melting would happen on a timescale of 50.000 years. Still, even within this temperature range often considered a global guardrail, the Greenland ice sheet is not secure. Previous research suggested a threshold in global temperature increase for melting the Greenland ice sheet of a best estimate of 3.1 degrees, with a range of 1.9 to 5.1 degrees. The new study’s best estimate indicates about half as much.
“Our study shows that under certain conditions the melting of the Greenland ice sheet becomes irreversible. This supports the notion that the ice sheet is a tipping element in the Earth system,” says team-leader Andrey Ganopolski of PIK. “If the global temperature significantly overshoots the threshold for a long time, the ice will continue melting and not regrow – even if the climate would, after many thousand years, return to its preindustrial state.” This is related to feedbacks between the climate and the ice sheet: The ice sheet is over 3000 meters thick and thus elevated into cooler altitudes. When it melts its surface comes down to lower altitudes with higher temperatures, which accelerates the melting. Also, the ice reflects a large part of solar radiation back into space. When the area covered by ice decreases, more radiation is absorbed and this adds to regional warming.
The scientists achieved their insights by using a novel computer simulation of the Greenland ice sheet and the regional climate. This model performs calculations of these physical systems including the most important processes, for instance climate feedbacks associated with changes in snowfall and melt under global warming. The simulation proved able to correctly calculate both the observed ice-sheet of today and its evolution over previous glacial cycles, thus increasing the confidence that it can properly assess the future. All this makes the new estimate of Greenland temperature threshold more reliable than previous ones.
Article: Robinson, A., Calov, R., Ganopolski, A. (2012): Multistability and critical thresholds of the Greenland ice sheet. Nature Climate Change [doi:10.1038/NCLIMATE1449]
Weblink to the article once it is published: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/NCLIMATE1449
For further information please contact:
PIK press office
Phone: +49 331 288 25 07
E-Mail: press@pik-potsdam.de
Yawn – the only thing at risk of meltdown is my brain from the alarmist CAGW hype, oh, and possibly the alarmist media keyboards (e.g. Black et al) furiously reiterating this cr@p as fast as they can……….
50,000 years ? – OMG, quick let’s act now!
OK, ok…. sigh… I give up. I’ll do it. Yea yea… I will this time, don’t worry…
It has to happen sooner or later anyway, so I might as well start at this very moment. Sigh….
So were did I leave these books… see… hmm… hope I put some subroutines on those floppy’s I still have somewhere…
Wait a minute… a lot has happened since…no no you guy, not these old languages any more I am afraid… you have to go for new ones… what have we now… fancy names… Perl… maybe first C++ though… basic stuff needed… R… wait a minute.. Ruby… wow, if only for that name…
Stop. Stop right there. Think. THINK. Start at the start. What is the start of it all, what will dictate your actions? This is it:
GOAL: a climate model that will DICTATE the climate. That’s what a climate model is nowadays, isn’t it? We have progressed so far with our computing power and programming, it’s not we have to simulate any more, now we can dictate… and with all these models dictating CAGW of course we need to counterbalance these idiots… can you fancy… they all are dictating now CAGW. Why is it not one of them dictates CAGC? Can’t they think? Don’t they realize what they are doing? Don’t they realize it will be a catastrophe this way? Oh well, somebody should be the first one, so I guess that’s me…
Now let’s see… it should be a model, so I’ll have to work in a modular way I think. Modules, modules… wait… yeah… I wanted to try that program anyway… “Pure Data”… like that name!… it’s modular… very flexible for programming… it’s interactive…. it’s mainly for multimedia… that’s even better… climate is kind of a multimedia event nowadays isn’t it?? YEAH! Pure Data it is! If needed, I can substitute temperature for sound frequencies. I mean, temperature=mean random oscillation of particles=frequency. Yes!
Don’t worry guys. Models for CAGC are on the way. Pure Data. Swing it out, be cool! The future is ours!
You see? It’s not that difficult. Don’t be shy. We all have our private supercomputer now. Just make your own model! 😉
A videotale from an 3 cm in diameter, tre kilometer long ice-drilling in Greenland, named NordGrip.
The first video start at 4:15 with Jørgen Peder Steffensen, Associate professor, curator, Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute Copenhagen
http://youtu.be/c0midUwYMS4
http://youtu.be/2iq7fEVwnsk
http://youtu.be/nGA4Clu4-V8
http://youtu.be/Lza3iCtGAZQ
If we could control the climate, how should it then be? As during the ice age, the Stone Age, the 1600s, the 1800s? wave
This is ‘scientific’ support (ie made up) which can be used in AR5 to bolster the absurd EU target of limiting any global warming increase to less than 2°C.
Anthony, I think “research” should be in quotes in your first sentence. Or replaced by “speculation”.
These are the same scientists who projected what Lisa’s teeth would look like if she didn’t get braces.
Linear to infinity! Negative feedbacks don’t exist!
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=glacier+girl&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=any&safe=images&tbs=&as_filetype=&as_rights=
Or just switch to Firefox or Chrome. No need to jump through major flaming hoops for a simple fix.
Anything is possible says:
March 12, 2012 at 9:20 am
If this interpretation of the Vostock ice-core is correct…..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
…a 2C rise in temperature would appear to be the trigger which sends the Earth plunging headlong into its next glaciation.
————————————————————
The graphs are certainly fudged, and admitted lower down the page to be retouched.
If you measure the scales you will find that they differ by a proportion sufficient to apparently show the peaks of the CO2 graph just before the peaks of the temperature, how convenient —–
but then it is Wikipedia.
This vast land was named during the MWP by the Viking discoverers because it was–well, green not white.
So to summarize there findings…..
Ice melts faster the more you heat it and
If the temperature stays high, water won’t freeze.
Earth shattering insights from a novel computer program indeed. I can still fell the foundations of the scientific world shaking …….
“The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be more vulnerable to global warming than previously thought. The temperature threshold for melting the ice sheet completely is in the range of 0.8 to 3.2 degrees Celsius global warming, with a best estimate of 1.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels, shows a new study by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Today, already 0.8 degrees global warming has been observed.”
Well then, we have already reached the critical threshhold then of 0.8 C. And with all that heat in the pipeline we are doomed I tell you. Oh wait, I forgot that since we have reached the edge of climat armageddon, the ocean Sea Level rise has been flat for six years.
“The scientists achieved their insights by using a NOVEL computer simulation of the Greenland ice sheet and the regional climate. This model performs calculations of these physical systems including the most important processes, for instance climate feedbacks associated with changes in snowfall and melt under global warming. (You know, huge predicted droughts because, of course, all this extra w/v in the atmosphere would stop all snow from ever falling on Greenland again) IN THE END THE SCIENTISTS REACHED THE CONCLUSION THAT IF AL GORE WAS ENTOMBED WITHIN THE GREENLAND ICE SHEET, THE “GORE EFFECT” WOULD PREVENT THIS DISASTER.”
There, I repaired this paragraph from the article.
Reblogged this on Erafoxtea66's Blog.
Save the world with love it !.
pwl says:
March 12, 2012 at 2:27 pm
If you find any mistakes or have additional calculations please please comment.
I did not double check everything, but some things caught my eye. However these do not affect the main thrust of your valid point.
2,580,000 cubic kilograms of ice is a mass of 2.85×10^18 kilograms
Did you mean cubic kilometers of ice?
333.55 kJ * 2.85×10^18 kg which is 9.51×10^20 kg kJ (kilogram kilojoules). That’s a lot of energy required.
You are mixing up units here. You should be multiplying kJ/kg x kg which gives kJ, a unit for energy.
Note that the volume of ice in Greenland would drop the temperature of four times the volume of water at 20c to 0c with this melting.
That may be true, but what relevance does this have for Greenland? If we could somehow take all of this ice and drop it into the ocean at the equator, that would be one thing. Or if an extremely warm gulf stream could make it underneath all that ice to melt it, that may also have some relevance. But if I am not mistaken, all ice from Greenland would have to melt by being warmed by air. So it would be more meaningful to say what volume of air at 20 C gets cooled to 0 C for each volume of ice that melts at 0 C.
Julian Braggins says:
March 12, 2012 at 10:31 pm
“Anything is possible says:
March 12, 2012 at 9:20 am
If this interpretation of the Vostock ice-core is correct…..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg
…a 2C rise in temperature would appear to be the trigger which sends the Earth plunging headlong into its next glaciation.
————————————————————
The graphs are certainly fudged, and admitted lower down the page to be retouched.
If you measure the scales you will find that they differ by a proportion sufficient to apparently show the peaks of the CO2 graph just before the peaks of the temperature, how convenient —–
but then it is Wikipedia.”
Wow! Great find, Julian! PURE BLACK PROPAGANDA AGAIN!
Regarding the lecture on northern vs southern hemisphere oscillation of temperature. Just a minor detail, the Vikings did not start to grow potatos again in Greenland. There were no potatoes in Greenland, or Europe for that matter, in 900 AD. So that makes it a first.
GIGO
Can’t base this study on real data and proxies because they show this is opposite of the truth.
Another problem is that let’s pretend that the Greenland continent is going to melt, the pole’s seasonal icing would absorb that melting too. The poles still get months of darkness which leads to their seasonal icing, they’ll freeze more (make more ice) if there’s more to freeze.