UPDATE: see this new article on the issue,
“Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time,” says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data.
Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8 (left) and July 12 (right). Measurements from three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12. In the image, the areas classified as “probable melt” (light pink) correspond to those sites where at least one satellite detected surface melting. The areas classified as “melt” (dark pink) correspond to sites where two or three satellites detected surface melting. The satellites are measuring different physical properties at different scales and are passing over Greenland at different times. As a whole, they provide a picture of an extreme melt event about which scientists are very confident. Credit: Nicolo E. DiGirolamo, SSAI/NASA GSFC, and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory
I covered this over the weekend when Bill McKibben started wailing about the albedo going off the charts. I thought it might be soot related. The PR below and quote above is from NASA Goddard. I had to laugh at the title of their press release, where they cite “Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt”, then contradict themselves when the main researcher goes on to say “melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889“. Do these guys even read their own press releases? Climatologist Pat Michaels concurs saying: “Apparently NASA should start distributing dictionaries to the authors of its press releases.”
I’ve sent off a note to the NASA writer, seen here. Maybe she’ll get the headline fixed.
That, and they seem surprised that the Greenland ice sheet would suddenly start melting in summer. Though, not every part of the ice sheet is melting right now, so perhaps their calibrations might be a bit off:
There may have been a brief few days of melt, but it appears to be over:
Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
For several days this month, Greenland’s surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its two-mile-thick center, experienced some degree of melting at its surface, according to measurements from three independent satellites analyzed by NASA and university scientists.
On average in the summer, about half of the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet naturally melts. At high elevations, most of that melt water quickly refreezes in place. Near the coast, some of the melt water is retained by the ice sheet and the rest is lost to the ocean. But this year the extent of ice melting at or near the surface jumped dramatically. According to satellite data, an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface thawed at some point in mid-July.
Researchers have not yet determined whether this extensive melt event will affect the overall volume of ice loss this summer and contribute to sea level rise.
“The Greenland ice sheet is a vast area with a varied history of change. This event, combined with other natural but uncommon phenomena, such as the large calving event last week on Petermann Glacier, are part of a complex story,” said Tom Wagner, NASA’s cryosphere program manager in Washington. “Satellite observations are helping us understand how events like these may relate to one another as well as to the broader climate system.”
Son Nghiem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was analyzing radar data from the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Oceansat-2 satellite last week when he noticed that most of Greenland appeared to have undergone surface melting on July 12. Nghiem said, “This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: was this real or was it due to a data error?”
Nghiem consulted with Dorothy Hall at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Hall studies the surface temperature of Greenland using the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. She confirmed that MODIS showed unusually high temperatures and that melt was extensive over the ice sheet surface.
Thomas Mote, a climatologist at the University of Georgia, Athens, Ga; and Marco Tedesco of City University of New York also confirmed the melt seen by Oceansat-2 and MODIS with passive-microwave satellite data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder on a U.S. Air Force meteorological satellite.
The melting spread quickly. Melt maps derived from the three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet’s surface had melted. By July 12, 97 percent had melted.
This extreme melt event coincided with an unusually strong ridge of warm air, or a heat dome, over Greenland. The ridge was one of a series that has dominated Greenland’s weather since the end of May. “Each successive ridge has been stronger than the previous one,” said Mote. This latest heat dome started to move over Greenland on July 8, and then parked itself over the ice sheet about three days later. By July 16, it had begun to dissipate.
Even the area around Summit Station in central Greenland, which at 2 miles above sea level is near the highest point of the ice sheet, showed signs of melting. Such pronounced melting at Summit and across the ice sheet has not occurred since 1889, according to ice cores analyzed by Kaitlin Keegan at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather station at Summit confirmed air temperatures hovered above or within a degree of freezing for several hours July 11-12.
“Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time,” says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data. “But if we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome.”
Nghiem’s finding while analyzing Oceansat-2 data was the kind of benefit that NASA and ISRO had hoped to stimulate when they signed an agreement in March 2012 to cooperate on Oceansat-2 by sharing data.
============================================
h/t to WUWT reader Ole Heinrich
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uknowispeaksense – What questions did you ask – I see only inaccurate comment? Reading your first post I see clear misunderstanding of how this blog works. You see, Anthony simply posted something that somebody else wrote. The 150 year claim was not his, he simply reproduced what Lora Koenig wrote: her research and her maths.Before wasting peoples’ time here, please try to engage brain before touching keyboard.
A brief look at your unsavoury blog seems to suggest that you see rising CO2 as a problem. My question to you is, do you see any link between CO2 concentration and Greenland’s albedo, since you imply that the albedo is related to the melting. If so, perhaps you would explain it and also explain whether it is the CO2 or the albedo that is causing the transient surface melt.
For the record, I am happy to accept that carbon particulates are affecting albedo over all ice-covered areas in the northern hemisphere and may indeed cause problems if not addressed. What I fail to understand is how cutting CO2 levels affects this directly, especially in developed countries where there are widescale and effective measures in place to limit particulate emissions. Much better to channel the vast amounts of money currently spent in cutting CO2 emissions to supporting developing economies in cleaning up their domestic and industrial energy generation and production processes. Now there is a green initiative that I could get behind and would love to see Greenpeace, IPCC etc actively promoting.
Are these NASA-guys gone mad? Ice melt in the sun even in wintertimes, when the temperature is far below 0°C. You can see this in your on garden, 1° or 2° C above 0 °C the melting of ice with acloudy sky is far lower than in the direct sun. Its just another scare mongering of the warmist.
The 1889 event was viewed only on a small area. No aircraft, or satellites then to reveal the total surface melt, balloons were available but driven by wind alone.
But given the low coverage 150 years ago, and that our satellite observations started in 1980 we cannot be confident that it is only a 150 year cycle, it could be more frequent and probably is.
Wrong!
Wrong!
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means!” — Inigo Montoya
According to the GISP2 data such melting events are far from a regular 150 year event although the occurrence over the last couple of thousand years is around that value. On the timescale from 1950 it occurred once in the last century but you have go almost a thousand years back to find the next event. Then there’s a cluster of 4 then a reduction in occurrence and so on…….
Kevin MacDonald says:
July 25, 2012 at 3:35 am
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1997.5/plot/wti/from:1997.5/trend reports:
#Time series (wti) from 1979 to 2012.25
#Selected data from 1997.5
#Least squares trend line; slope = 0.00152459 per year
1997.5 0.14243
2012.25 0.164918
I don’t know about you, but I’d be happy to call 0.00152459°C per year flat or in the noise.
You’d be a lot better off griping about the influence of the 1998 El Niño. In my experience, I’ve found it exceedingly hard to pick dates to avoid cherry picking, the data is just too noisy.
E.g. 10 years:
#Selected data from 2002.5
#Least squares trend line; slope = -0.00378016 per year
(I’d call that more than 3 times lower. Your colloquialism may vary.)
Or the Ben Santer 17 years is enough:
#Selected data from 1995.5
#Least squares trend line; slope = 0.00855425 per year
(We’re all going to fry. Well, less than a degree per century, so it might take a while.)
You might have a better case on that, though lately I’ve been more intrigued with the Tibetan tree ring study at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/07/in-china-there-are-no-hockey-sticks/
and its projection that 2006 was the peak in Tibet.
From NEEM (lower elevation than Summit)”
“A core from the CO2 firn-air sampling site at NEEM was retrieved in July 2009, and the physical properties of the firn have been analyzed. In the 81m of analyzed firn core, two regions containing ice layers were identified at depths of 29m and 46m. Isotopic analysis provides a depth-age scale that dates these layers to be from 1935 and 1879, respectively.” So it also happened in 1935!
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011AGUFM.C33C0661K
For maximum effect, the French newspaper “Le Figaro” doesn’t hesitate to go for it:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/environnement/2012/07/25/01029-20120725ARTFIG00343-groenland-sa-calotte-glaciere-a-presque-entierement-fondu.php
“Greenland: The Ice Cap has almost entirely melted!”
“Selon les données de trois satellites analysées par la Nasa et des scientifiques universitaires, environ 97% de la calotte glaciaire avait dégelé à la mi-juillet, a indiqué l’Agence dans un communiqué.
L’expert précise avoir remarqué la disparition de la majorité de la glace du Groenland au 12 juillet en analysant les données d’un premier satellite. Les résultats des deux autres satellites ont confirmé cette découverte. Les cartes satellitaires de la fonte montrent que la calotte glaciaire avait fondu à 40% au 8 juillet et à 97% quatre jours plus tard.”
Incompetence, sensationalism… It must be a candidate for the Friday Laugh.
So, while this percentage of ice melt, which is mostly temporary, is such an infinitely small percent of the total ice on that island, I need to be twisting my knickers in a bunch? Sorry. No can do. Now when the ice begins to melt in my drink, diluting the flavorfull elixer, I will get much more tizzied.
can’t spell today…must be thinking of fishing
Someone is not seeing the horror in this release, now posted on the NYTimes in glorious color. The average man in the street is going to read the deep pink area as indicating that Greenland is now pretty much ice free. Is that the right way to read the graphic? Or does the deep pink just mean some surface meltwater? What actually is going on there?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/science/earth/rare-burst-of-melting-seen-in-greenland-ice-sheet.html?hp
This is how the caption on the NYTimes graphic reads: “The extent of Greenland’s ice sheet surface, in white, on July 8, left, and July 12, right, based on measurements from three satellites, which pass over at different times and whose data are combined and analyzed. The deepest pink areas reflect maximal certainty that the ice has melted.” Not exactly internally consistent, and certainly not the same as the caption on the NASA news release, above.
More unprecedented BS from NASA.The organization is a disgrace.
Ole Heinrich says:
July 25, 2012 at 7:44 am
From NEEM (lower elevation than Summit)”
“A core from the CO2 firn-air sampling site at NEEM was retrieved in July 2009, and the physical properties of the firn have been analyzed. In the 81m of analyzed firn core, two regions containing ice layers were identified at depths of 29m and 46m. Isotopic analysis provides a depth-age scale that dates these layers to be from 1935 and 1879, respectively.” So it also happened in 1935!
No, it didn’t, because in 1935 there wasn’t a melting event at Summit!
The data at Summit is given by GISP2 as I pointed out above.
The rate of occurrence there is ~15/4000 years, since it’s such a rare event it’s reasonable to
model it as a Poisson process, with a λ of 0.375 (per century). Over the last 4000 years that’s a mean expectation of 0.375/century with a variance of 0.375.
From a Poisson analysis you’d expect ~27 centuries without a melt, ~10 centuries with one melt year, ~2 centuries which is in reasonable agreement with the data.
The Greenland summit webcam, look at all that melting … the horror
http://www.summitcamp.org/status/webcam/
Has anyone actually been on the ground to verify the melting? Interpretation of satellite imagery can sometimes be a little too subjective.
jayhd says:
July 25, 2012 at 9:36 am
“… Interpretation of satellite imagery can sometimes be a little too subjective.”
True.
Snow eventually becomes ice if you get enough of it.
Taking the snow cover for North America, and subtracting the Snow Cover for North America w/o Greenland, gives you Greenland’s snow cover. (yeah, I actually figured that out – :D)
It looks a bit like this.
http://i47.tinypic.com/2reh081.png
Smokey says:
July 24, 2012 at 5:08 pm
Entropic says:
“For recent climate change there is a demonstrated recent increase in temperature and a demonstrated recent increase in CO2.”
Key word: “recent”. He used it twice, so it must be important.
____________________________________
Of course “Recent” is very important. You can only scare the c^@p out of the ignorant masses if you ignore the past. Since we are talking Greenland this graph is appropriate. As is this peer reviewed paper:
Or we can go further back in time with this paper.
This paper indicates we are at the point in the earth’s Milankovitch cycle that ushers in an ice age. The biggest question of course is why we are not covered in ice yet.
At least some have taken note that the climate alarmism might be in the wrong direction.
Here is the “climate can shift gears within a decade”
“The onset of the LEAP occurred within less than two decades (see the core photograph in Fig. 4), demonstrating the existence of a sharp threshold, which must be near 416Wm22, which is the 658N July insolation for 118 kyr BP (ref. 9). This value is only slightly below today’s value of 428Wm22. Insolation will remain at this level slightly above the inception for the next 4,000 years before it then increases again.” ~ Sirocko, et al, Vol 436|11 August 2005|doi:10.1038/nature03905. Source
That author is taking it that there is absolutely no variation in solar insolation which is now known to be a false assumption NASA and TSI monitoring by satellite experiments
A couple questions to think about.
If you knew we were headed into glaciation, as one of the movers and shakers in world politics, would you tell everyone? Or would you “adjust” the world’s economy to move industry from the northern latitudes (the EU, USA, Australia, Canada and Russia) down to the southern latitudes (Brazil, India, Mexico, southern China and northern Africa, SE Asia)
Would you “adjust” the world’s economy (wealth redistribution) so as to develop the equatorial belt, and would you buy up large tracts of land in that belt?
Would you “adjust” the world’s politics to shut off the energy, especially for transportation, in the norther countries and herd those people into “compounds” so as to prevent them from using up soon to be scares resources. More importantly would you pick and choose those selected (DNA testing) to live while preventing those selected to parish from having the means to immigrate?
See: link
Do I think a glaciation is going to happen NOW? Of course not, but the movers and shakers of the world are long range planners they think in terms of the continuation of their families and keeping those families firmly in control of world politics. The Rothschild Dynasty is a good example.
I very much doubt that those Movers and Shakers believe in the drivel they are feeding to the general public. I can also see a shift in the attitude towards the industrial development of the USA in the 1970’s when the question of when the next glaciation would start was brought to the attention of the Movers and Shakers.
jayhd says:
July 25, 2012 at 9:36 am
Has anyone actually been on the ground to verify the melting? Interpretation of satellite imagery can sometimes be a little too subjective.
There are people on the ground there, the first instincts were to question the data as indicated in the report: “This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: was this real or was it due to a data error?”
Here’s a video of the effects of the melting in Greenland, this bridge was taken out! This was an exceptional event.
Philip Bradley says:
July 24, 2012 at 5:41 pm
Correlating CO2 with Arctic sea ice and not Antarctic sea ice is cherry picking, pure and simple.
And as I pointed out in the earlier thread, darker horizontal bands are clearly visible in Arctic icebergs. So they must be in ice cores. Some will be from volcanic eruptions, but I;d be interested to see a systemic study….
____________________________
Philip, How about this:
Interested says:
July 24, 2012 at 7:16 pm
Recent comments here have once again raised the point that CO2 is thought to have climbed from about 280ppm to 390ppm during the industrial era – a roughly 40% increase.
But can we be confident of even these widely accepted figures?….
____________________________
HECK NO! link
The temperature records as has been proved many times over have been tampered with. The CO2 measurements are just as bad. The worst is the ASSumption that CO2 is well mixed. (I fight with F .Englebeen on this point all the time. He can not distinguish between point results and averages over time and space it would seem)
Lucy Skywallker has gathered together much of the skeptic information.
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/CO2-ice-HS.htm
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/CO2-flux.htm
Discussion at Physics forum The great CO2 swindle?
After 1985 only the CO2 in the bubbles is reported while the data before 1985 (Higher results) also looked at the CO2 in the ICE SURROUNDING the BUBBLE. see: http://www.co2web.info/stoten92.pdf (Jaworowski & Segalstad)
Also link and a WUWT discussion.
Hope that helps.
What caused the sudden massive ice melt in Greenland?
The rapid melting of 97 percent of the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet in just four days has left scientists puzzled. Christian Science Monitor
Owen says:
July 25, 2012 at 8:43 am
More unprecedented BS from NASA.The organization is a disgrace.
______________________________
At this point, since we no longer have a Space Program, it sounds like time to de-fund NASA. I really do not want my taxes funding Muslim outreach instead. Actually it is time for a severe pruning of all the DC bureaucracies.
This type of propaganda needs to stop, and the best way to stop it is to cut off the money supply.
Meanwhile we have yet to have a SINGLE summer day here in middle of Norway. The hottest day was in may with 24c and since then it has been shit. We had a few days here and there over 20c, but then next day it is back to 10-12c again.
This might be the first summer at least in my lifetime with not a single day with 25c or higher.
We even had snow in middle of june at sea level and this is after several shitty summers and extreme winters in a row.