As WUWT readers are aware, there has been a great deal of attention paid by the main stream media to the extensive melt on the Greenland icecap that occurred during July (for example, see here, here, here, here, and here). The topic was addressed here at WUWT in two postings here and here. Anthony noted in the later posting that Andrew Revkin was almost alone in taking a more nuanced and skeptical view of the unprecedented nature of the event and has taken a fair amount of heat in comments for his effort.
I’m sure it will confirm the worst suspicions of some of Anthony’s critics, but Fox News has just posted an article on line: NASA’s claim that Greenland is experiencing “unprecedented” melting is nothing but a bunch of hot air, according to scientists who say the country’s ice sheets melt with some regularity.
A heat dome over the icy country melted a whopping 97 percent of Greenland’s ice sheet in mid-July, NASA said, calling it yet more evidence of the effect man is having on the planet.
But the unusual-seeming event had nothing to do with hot air, according to glaciologists. It was actually to be expected.
“Ice cores from Summit station [Greenland’s coldest and highest] 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,” said Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data.
The writer of the article contacted Anthony for comment:
“It’s somewhat like the rush to blame severe weather and drought on global warming,” Anthony Watts, a noted climate skeptic and the author of the Watts Up With That blog, told FoxNews.com. “Yet when you look into the past, you find precedence for what is being described today as unprecedented.”
Read the whole article here.
I’m sure our readers don’t really need to have it pointed out that the melting event did not melt 97% of Greenland’s ice sheet, but rather occurred over 97% of the surface area of the ice sheet and that the melting event has ended. We will undoubtedly be treated to that 97% statistic for a long time to come.
H/T to commenters PRD and David L. Hagen
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How many Manhattans did we lose?
From Greenland’s icy mountains to Afric’s steaming shores
With talk of sea level rises and yards of glacial cores
The predominant fact
Is not the snows vanishing act
But the vapidity of the AGW bores.
The last severe Pakistan floods was reported by the BBC as unprecedented only to be corrected later as the worst for 80 years. The BBC forgets that Pakistan has floods every year. Inconvenient but the water does bring new soil to be planted with crops so fertilizer use is minimal.
Physics Major says:
97%? Isn’t that the same as the percent of scientists in the “consensus”?
They seem to like that number
When dealing with con-artistry one must remember it is not what the con-artist tells you, it is what they don’t tell you that is important.They tell us that open water in the arctic absorbs more sunlight than ice covered water but don’t tell us what happens when the sun don’t shine. They tell us that Arctic sea ice minimum has dropped by 40% since 2005 but don’t tell us that it has dropped 0% since 2007.Remember, it is how con-artists work. One should always point out the left out facts and that leaving out facts is what con-artists do.
@Bill Marsh
>His post:
>“Fun Fact: Never in recorded history has more than 55% of Greenland’s icecap experienced summer melt. This year? 97%…”
>My Response:
>“Your ‘fun fact’ is absolutely erroneous. The facts are that Greenland’s ice cap is not experiencing ‘melt’, the surface of Geenlands ice cap is (and that is what the 97% figure refers to). The two are ENTIRELY different. If 97% of Greenland entire ice cap melted it would immediately raise sea levels by about 2 feet.”
+++++++++++
Here is one to toss in his direction, Bill: If the Greenland Ice sheet is 3.5 million cubic kilometers (estimates vary up to 5m) then 97% melting would produce 3.5 x 10^6 x 10^9 x 0.97 tons of fresh water. Agreed?
That is 3.4 x 10^15 tons and is as you say, enough to raise the oceans 2 feet. Seawater (or any water) is (depending on who you ask) about 600 ppm CO2 at (for example) the Molokai Reef
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2007/01/ Cold water as more, around deep volcanic vents it is much more.
As ice contains no CO2, the freshly melted ice would absorb (let’s say) 450 ppm CO2 from the atmosphere . If the Greenland ice sheet had indeed melted, it would have pulled
3.5 x 10^15 x 0.00045 = 1.53 x 10^12 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere, or about 1.53/3.16 = 48% of all atmospheric CO2.
Did your friend happen to notice a (392 ppm x 48% =) 189 ppm drop in CO2 lately, like, during this past month? Probably not.
Crispin;
It’s all just tricky wording. 97% of the surface melted 1mm. Big whoop.
@Brian H
“It’s all just tricky wording. 97% of the surface melted 1mm. Big whoop.”
Would that warmists would believe it. It seems the number ‘97%’ is going to be even more popular.
Incidentally I have not had a single ‘bite’ on my water-asborbing-CO2 story, here or elsewhere. It seems kind of an obvious (very large) error in the hand-waving calculations about temperature and melting and sea level and CO2.
I have been provided a high resolution data set for a Greenland ice core and will try to make an analysis of the CO2 and the effect of accumulating or melting ice. I will call it Crispin’s Climate Conjecture. When a lot of ice melts continuously, eventually the CO2 goes down and fresh water is the sink. It is visible when the melting is large scale. With orbital factors as a background forcing, it looks like a CO2 cycle may drive the ice ages as there are two quasi-stable conditions that both have a changing temperature, one rising, the other falling. At the top and bottom ends, CO2 in ice or water turns it around. It works because we have the right balance of water, ice and CO2. If CO2 goes up enough, it might kick the ice age condition but there are no guarantees because the effect of CO2 is only large at low concentration – a condition reached when Antarctica melts quite a bit. It does not necessarily recreate hothouse Earth with 20 deg C polar seas, but it could lead to a temperate climate on Greenland, for example with remnant ice caps in places like the South Pole.
All models that include melting should include CO2 draw-down from that fresh water, not just CO2 out-gassing from a ‘warmer ocean’. Might not be much warmer at all. If it melts, it absorbs. And quickly.
John F. Hultquist says:
July 26, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Woodworkers have a saying: “Measure twice, cut once.”
NASA and other agencies need to have a rule, maybe: “Write, review, rewrite, get a second opinion, rewrite, wait a day, think about it, rewrite, make sure the headline writer is onboard, then okay a press release.”
NASA’s is “Measure it with a micrometer, mark it with a grease pencil, cut it with an ax.”
Crispin in Waterloo says:
July 27, 2012 at 7:33 am
As ice contains no CO2, the freshly melted ice would absorb (let’s say) 450 ppm CO2 from the atmosphere . If the Greenland ice sheet had indeed melted, it would have pulled
3.5 x 10^15 x 0.00045 = 1.53 x 10^12 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere, or about 1.53/3.16 = 48% of all atmospheric CO2.
Did your friend happen to notice a (392 ppm x 48% =) 189 ppm drop in CO2 lately, like, during this past month? Probably not.
But we notice a sharp drop in CO2 concentration at Pt Barrow in the spring as the ice melts.
On Wednesday, PBS Newshour had an excellent (7 minute) piece which set the record straight.
It glossed over one point, but it is very important. Most of the melt was in place and stayed between the ice particles. This “melt” can be seen with sensors, but is hard to detect by just looking. The often mentioned lakes and streams are mostly in the lower elevations, but definitely not everywhere.
I just thought I had to post this for posterity. It is vintage Susie Goldberg. Ignorance and incompetance of climate reportorting at its best:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/24/greenland-ice-sheet-thaw-nasa
<>
Doesn’t “recorded history” go back rather a long time , like a tad more than the satellite era?
The quote from Goldberg that got chopped by wordpress, and should have read:
The Greenland ice sheet melted at a faster rate this month than at any other time in recorded history, with virtually the entire ice sheet showing signs of thaw.
@Phil
>But we notice a sharp drop in CO2 concentration at Pt Barrow in the spring as the ice melts.
Thank you thank you thank you. I have been looking at the Greenland ice core plots and the NH CO2 numbers for a while and I think the anual ‘breathing of the Earth’ (Hawaii-noted CO2 cycle) is the CO2 being picked up as the total mass of NH snow and ice melts, and then in winter it expells the CO2 again. I have been unable to find a quantification (mass) for teh annual cycle of all snow and ice for the NH. That plus the CO2 concentration should account for the variation between summer and winter readings (plus the background rise, of course).
When ice melts the CO2 is absorbed. That is my point. The snow and ice cover in the SH is not nearly as variable which is why the CO2 is relatively constant there.
BTW is anyone measuring atmospheric mercury on an hourly basis in your area?
The assumption is that the warm Greenland temperatures are caused by an increase in the greenhouse effect due to CO2 emissions.
The greenhouse effect, defined as the difference between the surface and top of atmosphere temperatures, has not increased in the Arctic as shown in this graph,
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Arctic_GHE.jpg
and explain in my article,
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/The_Melting_North.htm
Using the best available satellite data, there has been no increase in the greenhouse effect in the far north.
Greenland temperatures were higher in the 1930 and 1940 than in recent times.
97% —- where have I heard that previously? 1 is an anomoly; 2 is a coincidence; 3 is a trend
On a TV side note: There are no big coincidences and small coincidences, there are only coicidences….
97% – once is ‘usually’ and twice is ‘always’.
P. Solar says:
July 27, 2012 at 12:00 pm
I just thought I had to post this for posterity. It is vintage Susie Goldberg. Ignorance and incompetance of climate reportorting at its best:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/24/greenland-ice-sheet-thaw-nasa
Doesn’t “recorded history” go back rather a long time , like a tad more than the satellite era?
____________________________
Yes it goes back to when the Vikings started colonizing Greenland in the summer of 986 at least. (snicker)
http://www.heritage.nf.ca/exploration/norse.html
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/
Bill Tuttle says:
July 27, 2012 at 9:38 am
….NASA’s is “Measure it with a micrometer, mark it with a grease pencil, cut it with an ax.”
______________________________
You forgot the most important step. Pass it by a Jim Hansen or equivalent to make sure it has the greatest MSM splash in favor of scaring the masses about CAGW.
Ken Gregory says:
July 27, 2012 at 10:00 pm
The assumption is that the warm Greenland temperatures are caused by an increase in the greenhouse effect due to CO2 emissions….
___________________________
My assumption is the jet stream has gone from zonal to more meridional (link) in the summer (more loopy) and is sucking more warm air up from the tropics. see link for an in the works explanation.
Unless otherwise stated, “recorded history” means “since writing was invented” – about 5,000 years ago.
A miracle of the modern age:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/FourDay.gif
how many ppm’s of CO2 there were in 1889 ?
300
that is
300 ppm = 393 ppm (as far as the melting of Greenland surface is concerned)
conclusion ?
Don’t care to diminish CO2 ppm’s… Greenland’s ice surface is going to melt anyway (next 150 years)
CO2 doesn’t govern climate.
Those reading her might find this of interest.
http://www.gpsdaily.com/reports/GPS_Can_Now_Measure_Ice_Melt_Change_In_Greenland_Over_Months_Rather_Than_Years_999.html
Hmmm – Maybe this means that the 97% of scientists only agree on global warming on the surface? Perhaps we had this wrong all the time and the AGW crowd is always only referring to superficial agreement.
/sarc
The thing that makes me sad is that many of these articles contain with in themselves content that directly contradicts the conclusion of the article, yet the general public seem incapable of sufficient reading comprehension to see those contradictions and swallow the head line conclusion without any critical thought.
If I had written a paper like this news article in 5th ot 6th grade it would have come back with lots of red circles on it and questions like posted above regarding the poor and misleading phrasing that is obviously intended to mislead superficial readers.
Larry