From the University of Copenhagen comes realization that Greenland’s current warm spell is not unprecedented.
In the early 1920s and 1930s, temperatures were high, similar to that of the present, and this affected the glacial melt. At the time many glaciers underwent a melt similar or even higher than what we have seen in the last ten years.
The glaciers in southeast Greenland are retreating rapidly with the ongoing global climate change. But now research from the University of Copenhagen shows that the glaciers can recuperate within a short timeframe if temperatures are to drop. The results are based on a collection of Danish aerial photos combined with both old and modern satellite imagery as well as field work. The scientific results have created international attention and have been published as a cover story in the highly esteemed journal Nature Geoscience.
“We have managed to get an overview of the glacial evolution over a period of 80 years. This is the first time ever this has been done in a study of glaciers in Greenland. Results show that glaciers can recuperate within a short time frame if climate changes and temperatures drop, as it has in a period after the 1940s,” says PhD student and lead-author on the project Anders Bjørk, from Professor Eske Willerslev’s Centre for GeoGenetics from University of Copenhagen.
Anders Bjørk adds:
“Most of the scientific foundation, models, and theories on glaciers in Greenland and how global warming affects them are based on observations from satellites over the last ten years. Otherwise scientists have had to use previous warming events way into the past when wanting to compare today’s massive retreat.”
A fight for land between Denmark and Norway
The Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen and his seventh Thule-expedition in 1932-33 is a significant cause for the recent publication from Anders Bjørk and Dr. Kurt H. Kjær from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen. 
Results have created international attention as Greenland stands as an important region for northern latitudes are affecting the rest of the earth’s climate – including changes in glacial conditions and related sea-level rise.
Originally the many aerial photos, which have been achieved Danish National Survey and Cadastre, were used for producing new maps of the region in the early 1930s, as Denmark and Norway were fighting over the right of disposal of East Greenland, a fight without casualties which Denmark won at the International Court in Haag in the Netherlands in 1933.
Photos get a renaissanse
With help from the scientists and the Danish National Survey and Cadastre, the unique aerial photos have now gained a renaissance in a different setting where climate change and theories as “The Tipping Point” – where nature reaches a point where changes cannot be reversed are discussed.
“We have investigated no less than 132 glaciers on a 600 km coastal stretch in Southeast Greenland, both those who terminate on land and those who calve in the ocean. The historical photos have proven to be extremely valuable, and with these photos and other aerial photos recorded later during WWII and satellite imagery we are able to observe glacier change in very long historical context. In the early 1920s and 1930s, temperatures were high, similar to that of the present, and this affected the glacial melt. At the time many glaciers underwent a melt similar or even higher than what we have seen in the last ten years. When it became colder again in the 1950s and 1960s, glaciers actually started growing,” says Dr. Kurt H. Kjær and underlines:
“There should be no doubt that if the current temperature rise in Greenland continues then we will have problems with the melting of the glaciers. We are already seeing it now on the marine terminating glaciers where changes in temperature and ocean currents are influencing their stability. Another remarkable discovery we did was that the observed changes are not just local, it is happening in the entire region,” says Dr. Kjær.
Kurt H. Kjær has previously worked with his colleague Svend Funder from Center for GeoGenetics on investigating sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean. Results showed that the sea ice extent has been far from stable throughout the last 10,000 years.
Read the scientists’ newly published paper in Nature GeoScience .
Faux Science Slayer says:
May 30, 2012 at 10:50 am
“Never trust real estate agents with horned helmets and dragon boats!”
Now THIS is going too far. Let me be absolutely clear on the matter: Vikings DID NOT have horned helmets!!!!! The pictures you might have seen of horned helmets are from Bronze Age Denmark, and predate the Vikings by 1,000 years. Is not climate science all about accuracy? About getting time frames right? Huh? Huh?
“Horned helmets on Vikings.” Those are fighting words.
tonyb
as ever fascinating evidence……are you a Exonian by chance?
Mycroft
I live close to Exeter. I was at the met office archives just today and Exeter cathedral library last week looking for material for a future article so my proximity to that city is very useful. Are you from this part of the world?
Tonyb
The regional instrumental and ice core data clearly show that Greenland was just as warm in the 1930’s and during the Medieval Warm Period as it is today…
Greenland Sea Temperature Reconstruction
It’s also very clear that the Arctic sea ice extent is currently well above the Holocene “normal”…
Warming Island / Greenland Sea Regional Climate and Arctic Sea Ice Reconstruction
Some more background:
I have plotted the raw GISS temperature data of all stations around Greenland’s inland ice (but need to make an update for the past years). See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/greenland_temp.html
Greenland summer temperatures in the period 1930-1950 were higher than nowadays…
And from: http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm05/fm05-sessions/fm05_C41A.html
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. Observed changes in glacier behavior during these two events are markedly different. The recent thinning, which involved several episodes of retreat followed by large thinning, resulted in a rapid retreat of the calving front toward grounding line. Thinning in the 1950s occurred during a period when the calving front was stationary with only minor annual fluctuations. Nevertheless, aerial photographs collected in the 1940s and 50s indicate that thinning extended far inland.
Also the retreat and advancing of the Illulisat/Jacobshavn glacier was described here:
http://rsl.geology.buffalo.edu/documents/csatho_j07j061.pdf
“Intermittent thinning of Jakobshavn Isbræ, West Greenland, since the Little Ice Age”
Greenland has been warmer not as warm. I’m too lazy this evening to dig up the peer reviewed research which I have posted on WUWT. Someone else may care to do so.
OK, I got some energy back but still can’t find my own earlier comment postings. But here is something even better. It’s peer reviewed and from Warmists.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/12/gosh-really/
And here’s something I prepared earlier.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/29/h2o-2012-conference-theme-please-send-money/#comment-996870
This post reminds me of the satellites photos of the Pacific coral attols which showed that most had held their ground in the face of rising sea levels and some had even grown. Observations are the fly in the ointment.
See Floating Island.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/27/floating-islands/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/02/tuvalu-and-many-other-south-pacific-islands-are-not-sinking-claims-they-are-due-to-global-warming-driven-sea-level-rise-are-opportunistic/
“Considering available station data that are continuous and begin before 1900 (Table 3), the year 2006 is not outstanding. In this longer perspective, only 2003 at Tasiilaq is outstanding in recent decades. Over the past century, years in Greenland that register as abnormally warm, 1929, 1932, 1941, 1947, and 1960 are outstanding, having temperatures warmer than observed recently. Increases in GrIS melt and runoff during this past century warm period must have been significant and were probably even larger than that of the most recent last decade (1995-2006)”
— Arctic Report Card 2007 http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/report07/essay_hanna.html
This brings to mind the challenge of the temperatures that GCHN is trying to bring down. Iceland/Greenland of the 1940’s?
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/iceland-temperature-adjustmentsghcn-still-have-not-started-investigating/
Excellent news, as the melting Greenland glaciers have been one of AGW’s posterchild.
Let us spread the word about it.
Unfortunately, the paper itself is behind a paywall. I wanted to have a closer look at which glaciers retreated more in the 1930s period compared to the recent period.
I believe, based on other papers that recent glacial retreat in Greenland is strongly related to aspect. South facing glaciers are retreating, while north facing ones aren’t. I wanted to see the location of the glaciers that retreated more in the 1930s.
Atmospheric warming should affect different glaciers in the same area in a similar manner, and affect the same glacier in substantially the same way in different time periods. The differences found in this paper indicate that the 1930s warming was different to the recent warming.
I recall that even Walt Meier acknowledged that greenland had been warmer at the beginning of the XX century.
Unfortunately I cannot provide a reference for the following, as it is from memory.
However, I recall a few years ago I was watching a BBC report on global warming, and the reporter had travelled to Greenland to film the disappearing glaciers. And one scene made be screem at the TV due to the extraordinary stupidity of the reporter.
They showed us a bay that was ice free for the first time in living memory as the snow and ice no longer reached the water. And there in the bay were the remains of an old port – signs of buildings, and what looked like part of a jetty. And the reporter quite happily reported that nobody had known there had been a port here until global warming had exposed it!
I consider that Greenland temperatures during the Viking seetlement period are very much underestimated. It would not surprise me if they were between 3 to 6 degC warmer than they are today. Agriculture was very primative back then. As we are discovering much of their farmland is still under glaciers. As those glaciers retreat, the Earth below is not easy to till and will not be so unless the land warms by several degrees. One must not forget that they did not have mechanical equipment (as is used today on farms) and tools were not as efficient as the cheap spade or fork that you buy today at your local garden shop. There were no fertilizers and genetically engineered seed was not as developed, no greenhouses etc and buildings were not iunsulated and could only be heated by open fire.
Greenland was colonized for several hundred years. Climate/weather is notoriously variable from year to year. One can’t engage in subsistence farming and survive for hundreds of years if one was just on the threshold of sustainable farming. The predominant feature of the climate back then must have been years of plenty which would see them survive the few unexpectedly harsh years which undoubtedly must have been encountered from time to time. This points strongly to a much warmer climate than today.
Of course, Greenland is not global. However, we know of no explanation that would explain why a small area of Greenland would be significantly warmer than it is today. What was the mechanism? Most likely the warm gulf stream was routed nearer Greenland and/or was warmer (the latter would indicate warmer global conditions) and/or jet streams were slightly different. That said, there is no reason to believe that conditions were just limited to Greenland and did not for example include the majority of Northern Europe. It is likely that the Vikings thrived because Northern Europe was warmer than it is today. Anyone who has lived even in Southern Scandinavia will know how harsh the climate is and it would not surprise me that it was more benign during the Viking period. .
Torgeir Hansson says:
May 30, 2012 at 1:34 pm
Now THIS is going too far. Let me be absolutely clear on the matter: Vikings DID NOT have horned helmets!!!!! The pictures you might have seen of horned helmets are from Bronze Age Denmark, and predate the Vikings by 1,000 years. Is not climate science all about accuracy? About getting time frames right? Huh? Huh?
“Horned helmets on Vikings.” Those are fighting words.
Wow — who’d have suspected that the Vikings wore heirloom horned helmets?
*running for the bunker*
richard verney says:
May 31, 2012 at 1:37 am
I consider that Greenland temperatures during the Viking seetlement period are very much underestimated…One can’t engage in subsistence farming and survive for hundreds of years if one was just on the threshold of sustainable farming.
They were doing more than subsisting — they were also growing (and harvesting) enough hay to provide fodder for the inhabitants of those 50-cow barns. The growing season today is too short to allow the hay they plant to reach maturity, so they have to harvest it half-grown.
tonyb said..
Mycroft
I live close to Exeter. I was at the met office archives just today and Exeter cathedral library last week looking for material for a future article so my proximity to that city is very useful. Are you from this part of the world?
Tonyb
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Yes born and bred.Look forward to your article/post in general as i believe we can learn alot from past climatic events/ occurances
Are how are you received at the met offices with regards to past climate searches and the AGW issue?
mycroft
Of course, Greenland is not global. However, we know of no explanation that would explain why a small area of Greenland would be significantly warmer than it is today. What was the mechanism?
The west Greenland settlements were all on the east side of fairly high mountains indicating that westerly foehn winds played a role in producing conditions warm enough for farming. A reduction in these winds may have played a role in the end of the settlements.
mycroft
I am an insignificant flea on the backside of the giant climate elephant. Anyway, the climate elephant very rarely visits its own archives.
tonyb
Another good resource for Greenland of the 1930s (and studded with pictures and maps):
National Geographic, Sept. 1934, pp. 261-304, “Flying Around the North Atlantic” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She and her husband crossed the icecap twice, followed the coastline, from Disko Bay area to Clavering Island, visited Dr.Lauge Koch’s research area, and literally ”redrew” the map of some areas of Greenland. I expect the photos in the magazine are only the tip of the iceberg of those taken on this fllight.
Tonyb said
I am an insignificant flea on the backside of the giant climate elephant. Anyway, the climate elephant very rarely visits its own archives.
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Yes but with enough fleas, even the biggest elephant can be bought to it knees. as regards to vististing their own archives…”lest we look into the mirror and see what we have become, and what was before”keep up the good work
Mycroft
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.
Ecclesiastes 1.
In the early 1920s and 1930s, temperatures were high, similar to that of the present, and this affected the glacial melt. At the time many glaciers underwent a melt similar or even higher than what we have seen in the last ten years.
So the temperature was similar to today but the melt was HIGHER.
Was quite hot in the US around that time.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/dustbowl.jpg