You may recall the bogus claim of “97% of Greenland Ice melted”, that was dialed back (REP’s last story on WUWT). Now there’s more of the same sort of stuff. See this PR, and note my bold for the money quote.
From the City College of New York
Greenland melting breaks record 4 weeks before season’s end
Melting over the Greenland ice sheet shattered the seasonal record on August 8 – a full four weeks before the close of the melting season, reports Marco Tedesco, assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at The City College of New York.
The melting season in Greenland usually lasts from June – when the first puddles of meltwater appear – to early-September, when temperatures cool. This year, cumulative melting in the first week in August had already exceeded the record of 2010, taken over a full season, according to Professor Tedesco’s ongoing analysis.
“With more yet to come in August, this year’s overall melting will fall way above the old records. That’s a goliath year – the greatest melt since satellite recording began in 1979,” said Professor Tedesco.
This spells a change for the face of southern Greenland, he added, with the ice sheet thinning at its edges and lakes on top of glaciers proliferating.
Professor Tedesco noted that these changes jibe with what most of the models predict – the difference is how quickly this seems to be happening.
To quantify the changes, he calculated the duration and extent of melting throughout the season across the whole ice sheet, using data collected by microwave satellite sensors.*
This ‘cumulative melting index’ can be seen as a measure of the ‘strength’ of the melting season: the higher the index, the more melting has occurred. (The index is defined as the number of days when melting occurs multiplied by the total area subject to melting.)
Dr. Thomas Mote, Professor of Geography at the University of Georgia and colleague of Professor Tedesco, confirmed that the cumulative melt in 2012 had surpassed that of 2010 using a similar analysis.
The August 8th record differs from NASA’s announcement of unprecedented melting in mid-July, reported by Professor Tedesco and other researchers. Then, they found that the Greenland ice sheet had melted over 97 percent of its surface.
“That event was exceptional in the sense that it was an extremely rare event,” said Professor Tedesco. “Imagine Rio de Janeiro under a layer of snow and you get the idea.”
The extreme melting detected in mid-July, on the other hand, generated liquid water that refroze after a few days. “This changed the physical properties of the snowpack – making a slushy layer that turned into an icy crust after refreezing – but very likely it did not add to the runoff of meltwater that makes sea levels rise.”
The cumulative melting index, on the other hand, does account for water flowing to the ocean. The same meltwater can affect ice dynamics by lubricating the base of the ice sheet and speeding its slide toward the sea.
This year, Greenland experienced extreme melting in nearly every region – the west, northwest and northeast of the continent – but especially at high elevations. In most years, the ice and snow at high elevations in southern Greenland melt for a few days at most. This year it has already gone on for two months.
“We have to be careful because we are only talking about a couple of years and the history of Greenland happened over millennia,” cautioned Professor Tedesco. “But as far as we know now, the warming that we see in the Artic is responsible for triggering processes that enhance melting and for the feedback mechanisms that keep it going. Looking over the past few years, the exception has become part of the norm.”
* The National Snow and Ice Data Center provided satellite data from the United States Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.
The NASA Cryospheric Sciences Program and the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored this research.
Note: An upcoming paper submitted by Professor Tedesco and his colleagues examines the losses and gains that the Greenland ice sheet could experience, as projected through the end of the 21st Century according to different CO2-level scenarios.
Online:
Greenland Melting www.greenlandmelting.com
Video: Bridge destruction over Watson River, Greenland, likely a consequence of cumulative melting. (Filmed by M.Tedesco) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKjXKAatiIs
NASA Release: Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/greenland-melt.html
===========================================================
This quote…
“That event was exceptional in the sense that it was an extremely rare event,” said Professor Tedesco. “Imagine Rio de Janeiro under a layer of snow and you get the idea.”
In juxtaposition with this one:
“That’s a goliath year – the greatest melt since satellite recording began in 1979.”
…has to be one of the most ridiculous ones I’ve ever seen.
How rare? Well professor, show me the records of such melts prior to satellite monitoring and you might have an argument. Greenland melts every summer. How many summer in the past 1000 years have such levels of melt? I don’t think he can tell us. Is a 1 in 30 year event “rare”?
As for the reason, I think this figures in:
I refer you to this photograph of a Moulin in Greenland:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/03/greenland-ground-zero-for-global-soot-warming/
Image from National Geographic online slide show – Photo: James Balog – click for moreBalog writes:
In the winter a huge among of snow are accumulated on the Ice (2-3 meters, sometimes more) and we are not talking about 1 or 2 square-miles, it’s about 100.000′s of square miles (up to 1 million) on the Westside of the Ice cap and a similar picture on the Eastside… when the melting season starts in april-sep… the meltwater has to go somewhere, and for sure it goes downhill in huge meltwater rivers.
The black stuff on the bottom of the lakes is carbon dust and pollution in general… but not from one year, but several decades (the topographical conditions don’t change from year to year). On a flight over the Ice Cap a sky clear day, you can see hundreds of huge lakes with the black spot on the bottom.
See this experiment with soot on snow done by meteorologist Michael Smith of WeatherData where soot made a huge difference.
Thanks. Two questions: (1) When the ice melts and refreezes, does the resulting surface have a higher reflectivity (reflectance? Shinier!) that might trick the satellites into thinking it is still melted? How much could that distort the readings? (2) It takes energy to melt ice. Presumably if we know the surface temperature, convection cooling effect, hours and intensity of sunlight, we can figure out how many (million) liters of melt-water could possibly result during the melt season. We know the area. So we will know the depth of the pools –probably a few millimeters or a centimeter (except where it gathers and creates moulins etc). H
Could one factor for this be a couple of volcanos on Iceland not so long ago? Spraying the ice with black dust?
@ur momisugly James Abbott who says, “Its not hype – its happening.”
What’s happening James? It’s called weather. It’s summer in the northern hemisphere and this year it’s particularly hot in the US. Not unusual. I remember sweltering summers in So California in my childhood where for years the TV media went out and fried eggs on the sidewalk. (that was before the AGW hype) It was a curiosity, not a catastrophe.
This July was particularly COLD in many areas like Alaska, Britian, Africa, and New Zealand. Check out these articles with an open mind–not time to panic today:
“Record cold wave breaks 13 low temperature records: Juneau | Alaska news at adn.com”
http://www.adn.com/2012/07/14/2542733/record-cold-wave-breaks-13-low.html
“Most of the globe was cold, including snow in S. Africa and AUstralia-New Zealand.”
“Globally, for land/ocean surface combined, July 2012 averaged 0.47 degrees C. (0.85 F) above the 1951-1980 average, making last month the 13th warmest July on record. Records go back to 1880.” http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/how-did-july-2012-temperatures-1/69851
“The image below shows the satellite measured temperature anomalies of the lower troposphere for July 2012. The areas with the greatest warming relative to normal were over North America, Greenland and southeastern Europe. The far southern hemisphere experienced more widespread below-normal temperatures. ” http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/global-satellite-temperature-d/69263
“NASA satellite measurements confirm that 97% of Greenland’s ice sheet has melted this summer, far more than ever before recorded.”
This is wrong. It’s not 97% it’s 997% and we are all doomed!!!
The media-propagated claims about 97% of Greenland melting evaporate under scrutiny even faster than the claims about 97% of climate scientists “supporting” the warmist position.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/
I’m also dubious about meltwater “lubricating the base of the ice sheet and speeding its slide toward the sea” to any significant degree.
From my recollection of high-school geography, there are submerged terminal moraines and depressions at the mouths of Norwegian fjords, because the weight of a sufficiently thick glacier or ice-cap squeezes out any water underneath it, even below sea level.
Meltwater flows over the surface of the ice cap (see photo above) and only descends underneath it through discrete channels (moulins). I do not see how the ice can “slide” on meltwater upon which it neither sits or floats.
Does anyone know of any peer-reviewed lit. quantifying this meltwater induced “sliding”?
Has anyone determined how much of the meltwater re-freezes after descending below the ice cap, where temperatures will be several degrees below freezing?
“Tez, the Vikings didn’t farm in Greenland for 500 years, not even close.”
Depends on what you call “close”. Greenland was first settled in 986 AD and the settlement there is last mentioned in icelandic sources in 1410 AD, but the archeological finds at Herjolfsnes indicates that the settlement probably survived at least to about 1450 AD. So – no – probably not quite 500 years.
and just in case anybody asks why the massive amount of meltwater has not had any effect on sea levels we might just drop this one in……
‘The extreme melting detected in mid-July, on the other hand, generated liquid water that refroze after a few days. “This changed the physical properties of the snowpack – making a slushy layer that turned into an icy crust after refreezing – but very likely it did not add to the runoff of meltwater that makes sea levels rise’
Fascinating that there are almost instant “peer reviews” of dubious statements. Who needs academics when there are the Graeme W and tty’s out there? Wonderful and should never be taken for granted for without the WUWT, JoNova et al the alternative view would never be “heard”.
Hmmm, the models “jibe” with the climate, except for the “difference”:
“Professor Tedesco noted that these changes jibe with what most of the models predict – the difference is how quickly this seems to be happening.”
So the models still haven’t been fixed. Andreas Roesch published that ALL of the AR4 models had a positive surface albedo bias, i.e., under representing the surface albedo feedback by over 3W/m^2 globally and annually averaged. A figure about 4 times larger than the energy imbalance.
Scambos, who coauthored “Arctic Sea Ice Decline: Faster Than Forecast?” with Julienne Stroeve published in JGR, a few years ago noted that:
“Because of this disparity, the shrinking of summertime ice is about thirty years ahead of the climate model projections,”
Stoeve herself said: “The actual rate of sea ice loss in March, about ?1.8 percent per decade in the 1953 to 2006 period, was three times larger than the mean from the computer models,”
The problem is that the models just under represent the surface albedo feedback, it isn’t missing, so, in addition to the models are “matching” the recent warm climate incorrectly, the models will double down on their error by eventually catching up with the surface albedo, adding another 3+W/m^2 in the future to a climate that should have already had that absorbed energy in it. That is an amount comparable to the CO2 forcing that will also be added over the next century. I call it “Climate Models Gone Wild”. The model based “evidence” for net positive feedback to CO2 forcing was already shown to have no credibility back in 2006 by Roesch, and this was pointed out to the IPCC AR4 WG1 authors. Of course, they chose to report the model projections without any attempt to account for the impact of documented correlated model errors.
Look on the bright side. If we do head into a new mini ice age we can just take off the expensive filter systems that were added to Western coal-fired power stations and pump soot into the atmosphere. Cheap geo-engineering solution to too much snow.
David Ross says:
August 15, 2012 at 11:10 pm
Has anyone determined how much of the meltwater re-freezes after descending below the ice cap, where temperatures will be several degrees below freezing?
As 50% of Earths heat comes from within, it’s probably quite hot below the ice sheet.
The weight of ice probably means the bottom of the ice sheet is water anyway.
A Frenchmans head is convex but his beret dosn’t slip off when it gets wet in a downpour!
David Ross says:
August 15, 2012 at 11:10 pm
“the weight of a sufficiently thick glacier or ice-cap squeezes out any water underneath it, even below sea level.
Meltwater flows over the surface of the ice cap (see photo above) and only descends underneath it through discrete channels (moulins). I do not see how the ice can “slide” on meltwater upon which it neither sits or floats.”
I doubt you need peer review for this one. Direct experience may do it.I live in an area once under an ice sheets and its geography includes eskers, lines of deposited gravel till where watercourses once flowed below the ice.
Regarding lubrication, large volumes of water would tend to be squeezed out from between the ice and the underlying rock, if there was somewhere for it to flow. This is why you see meltwater flowing out under the terminal of a glacier. A thin layer if water would remain due to pressure melting, sufficient to provide lubrication. The same effect occurs when you ice skate; the pressure of your weight on the thin blades melts a thin film of water which reduces friction significantly.
Maybe it’s my pc monitor but it looks like I can also see black stuff at the sides of the ice too. But never mind soot and other pollutants it’s all down to the trace gas co2.
Anyway, more recent dumpings of snow at the summit.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/ice-gain-in-greenland-this-summer/
George Lawson:
At August 16, 2012 at 12:43 am you say
True, and the quote has another – perhaps more important – significance.
The melting and re-freezing of surface ice was observed on this occasion. So, it may have happened many times in the past when it could not have been observed.
Hence, you may want to “drop the quote in” whenever people claim the ice has “trapped” CO2 to provide an accurate indications of past atmospheric CO2 concentrations..
Richard
davidmhoffer says:
August 15, 2012 at 3:48 pm
As Numberwatch points out in Definitions, the mobile phone is a communications device that has failed to “kill its billions” of users! What better example of scare stories can you have?
This paper appears to be more global warming nonsense, another confirmation of The Law of Warmist BS. 🙂
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/28/the-gleick-tragedy/#more-57881
It should now be obvious that global warming alarmists and institutions like the IPCC have NO predictive track record – every one of their major scientific predictions has proven false, and their energy and economic recommendations have proven costly and counterproductive.
Some of us skeptics, in comparison, have an excellent predictive record. Here are some of our successful predictions from a decade ago, in 2002:
http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
1. Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.
3. Kyoto wastes enormous resources that are urgently needed to solve real environmental and social problems that exist today. For example, the money spent on Kyoto in one year would provide clean drinking water and sanitation for all the people of the developing world in perpetuity.
5. Kyoto will actually hurt the global environment – it will cause energy-intensive industries to move to exempted developing countries that do not control even the worst forms of pollution.
8. The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.
The basis for the failed predictions of the IPCC et al is their insistence on a high climate sensitivity to CO2 – about an order of magnitude (10 times) too high.
This “climate sensitivity” is the essence of the mainstream argument between climate alarmists and climate skeptics, and it is now obvious that the alarmists are incorrect in their assumption of a “high sensitivity” value.
There has been no net global warming for 10-15 years.
Furthermore, the aerosol values used to force climate models to conform to observed cooling from ~1940-1975 were clearly fabricated to force this hindcasting to occur – actual aerosol measurements as reported by Douglas Hoyt and others disprove the fabricated aerosol values.
The rational conclusion is that the observed global cooling and warming trends are not unusual, are not primarily caused by humankind, and are in fact almost entirely natural in origin. That is the basis of our successful predictive track record, and that is, in all probability, the truth.
That is why we correctly stated, in 2002:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.“
Furthermore, based on our above “natural origin” conclusion and observations of climate behaviour, in 2002 I (we) predicted imminent global cooling as the next probable step.
I still believe global cooling will occur, and can only hope that this cooling will be mild and not severe. My best guess, however, is a 40% probability that by 2020-2030 cooling will have commenced that is severe enough to significantly reduce the global grain harvest. Since I see no evidence that humanity is taking any mitigating measures to adapt to global cooling, I would very much like to be wrong in this last prediction.
tty says:
August 15, 2012 at 11:23 pm
“Tez, the Vikings didn’t farm in Greenland for 500 years, not even close.”
Depends on what you call “close”. Greenland was first settled in 986 AD and the settlement there is last mentioned in icelandic sources in 1410 AD, but the archeological finds at Herjolfsnes indicates that the settlement probably survived at least to about 1450 AD. So – no – probably not quite 500 years.
———————————————
You are on perilous ground here. One point of passionate argument on WUWT regards the existance, or non-existance of the Medieval Warm Period.
Those of us getting rather fed up with hype from all sides in the climate change debate may agree with Mr. Harrabin here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19269571
NASA, CRU, NOAA, GWPF and WUWT please take note.
Allan MacRae; add one more to your list. If impoverished nations are “discouraged” from using coal to produce cheap electricity they are being condemned to eternal poverty. Only with cheap power can such countries start to enjoy the benefits the West take for granted.
Entropic man:
I see you are still trolling. For example at August 16, 2012 at 3:38 am you say
No. Pressure does not melt ice. That is a common ‘urban myth’ but it is false.
At all temperatures down to below -40 deg.C the surfaces of solid Ice surfaces are coated in a thin layer of liquid water which is only a few molecules thick. And this liquid film is why ice is slippery.
The reason for this film has only been determined by material science in recent decades, but the liquid surface of ice was discovered a long time ago by Michael Faraday (even you may have heard of him: he did some work on electricity).
All your arguments based on the ‘urban myth’ are wrong because the myth is wrong.
Richard
While there may have been occasions in Greenland’s past when it was warmer than now, certainly during the Holocene maximum when solar input was around 7% higher, that did not coincide with the rest of the globe also being hotter. The MWP may have been warm in Greenland but is virtually undetectable in Himalayan ice-cores.
The present rate of melting in Greenland may not be unprecedented in the last 6000 years, but any past events were not associated with a global warming of the same magnitude.
On the issue of the 97% surface melt, it is a clear indication of the increasing incidence of extreme events. The preceding surface melt was around 150 years ago, but the one before that was 700 years ago and there have only been 6 events in the last 2000 years.
The incidence of Greenland surface melt was much higher during the Holocene maximum 7000 years ago when temperatures were higher, or at least higher than for the last few millennia. Present Greenland temperatures seem to be approaching those extremes with the concomitant increase in extreme melt event.
Without any contribution for increased solar input from orbital changes.
Here is a graph of the surface melt events in Greenland showing the way the incidence follows the temperature.
http://www.gisp2.sr.unh.edu/DATA/alley1.gif
Since this year is not particularly warm globally, how can global warming be the cause. If it were you’d have expected even more melting in 2010, or 1998 or several other years. This is clearly another regional event just like the warm summer in the US. Since we’ve had many warm summers in the US in the past I suspect Greenland has had just as many.
Once again this demonstrates the dishonesty of the alarmists. They have to know what I stated above is true but they went ahead and spewed the propaganda anyways. As Dr. Hoerling stated in his rebuttal of NASA’s Hansen, all this does is reduce their credibility.
Tez says on August 15, 2012 at 2:34 pm :
“There was far less ice there when the Vikings were farming Greenland for a period of 500 years beginning approx 1000AD.”
============
Yes, nearly correct (let’s say possibly 250 years instead of 500) – and, as far as I can deduce, there was a lot less soot from the German and American factories landing on top of the pristine “Greenland Ice-sheet” back then. – So, how much warmer than today must the “Medieval Warm Period” have been? –
I see Wikipedia has ditched (or relegated to 2nd place) the Mann made “hockey-stick” in favor of a more devious (or half broken) one. One which acknowledges the “Medieval Warm Period” (MWP) but uses that period’s temperature peak as baseline, or T=0, resulting in making the year 2004 some 0.4, or even 0.5 deg. C warmer than at any earlier time during the past 2000 years.
Wikipedia also state: “The medieval warm period and little ice age are labeled at roughly the times when they are historically believed to occur, though it is still disputed whether these were truly global or only regional events.” –
Is Wiki really saying: ”historically believed to occur”? – Or should I change my optician?
richardscourtney says:
August 16, 2012 at 3:48 am
Hence, you may want to “drop the quote in” whenever people claim the ice has “trapped” CO2 to provide an accurate indications of past atmospheric CO2 concentrations..
Dear Richard,
Actually, remelt layers are readily observed in the coastal ice cores of Antarctica and in the Greenland ice core, that is why one could say that this happened 150 years ago at the Greenland summit too. For the CO2 levels, the only problem is that the air in the firn is sealed from exchanging with the atmosphere above, that makes that the air bubbles below the sealing have a smaller averaged years mixture than above the sealing and the ice age – gas age difference gets smaller too. But that doesn’t affect the accuracy of the CO2 levels themselves. Except that Greenland ice cores are unreliable for CO2 levels, due to inclusions of highly acidic volcanic dust from Icelandic eruptions, which interact in situ with sea salt carbonate dust inclusions.
Thanks for the feedback Kelvin Vaughan and Entropic man. Those were points I was not aware of. If the moderator allows, I’ll take this opportunity to open discussion about an aspect of the MWP that has been nagging me.
Why did Phil Jones mention the “Alerce series” in this Climategate email?
———————————–
From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: Re: Fw: Law Dome O18
Date: Mon Feb 9 15:50:09 2004
[…]
At 10:19 09/02/2004 -0500, you wrote:
HI Phil,
Personally, I wouldn’t send him anything. I have no idea what he’s up to, but you can be sure it falls into the “no good” category.
[…]
At 02:46 PM 2/9/2004 +0000, Phil Jones wrote:
Mike,
FYI. Sent him the two series – the as received versions. Wonder what he’s up to? Why these two series? Used a lot more in the 1998 paper.
Didn’t want the Alerce series.
[…]
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1076359809.txt&search=alerce
———————————–
The above email; the following two news reports from the 1990s (I read old newspapers) and the fact that Mann’s hockey stick only applies to the northern hemisphere; lead me to suspect that something is amiss. But I’m not sure. I’d like to hear any comments from more informed WUWTers.
———————————–
Tree Rings Show No Warming Tendency
New York Times July 13, 1993
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/13/science/tree-rings-show-no-warming-tendency.html
GROWTH rings from a 3,613-year-old South American tree show no evidence that human activity has had a warming effect on the climate, scientists say.
Two researchers report that annual rings in an alerce tree, the second oldest tree species known, show that although the climate near the west coast of South America has warmed and cooled many times over thousands of years, there has been no increase in temperatures during the industrial age.
The report appeared recently in the journal Science.
The scientists said their study did not contradict research suggesting that parts of the Northern Hemisphere have experienced warming trends. But the results do indicate that any so-called global warming is not really global, at least not yet.
Ricardo Villalba of the University of Colorado at Boulder and Antonio Lara of the University of Arizona said they measured the width of tree rings in 96 trunk wedges, or corings, taken from standing alerce trees or from stumps of harvested trees in Chile and Argentina. Average annual temperatures affect seasonal tree growth. As a result, it is possible to use the tree rings to reconstruct climatic conditions.
Mr. Villalba said that rings in the stump of one tree felled in 1975 showed that the tree had lived for at least 3,613 years. Other trees studied had lived from 325 to 2,248 years, he said.
Temperatures in the area, he said, were much higher before the industrial age than now. Summertime temperatures in southern South America increased from 1400 B.C. to 750 B.C. and then cooled, he said. The longest period when temperatures were above the mean for the area was from 80 B.C. to A.D. 160.
“The most recent warm periods were from A.D. 1720 to 1750, and from 1800 to 1880,” the study said. “The longest intervals with below-average temperatures were from 770 to 570 B.C., from A.D. 300 to 470, and from A.D. 1490 to 1700.”
“Global warming may not be a generalized problem,” Mr. Villalba said. “We need to know more about atmospheric circulation of temperatures” before science can draw any final conclusion about the effect of industry on global climate, he said.
———————————–
And of related interest.
———————————–
In Unexpected Places, Clues to Ancient and Future Climate Warming?
Tree Rings Say Not Yet
New York Times December 1, 1992
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CEFDE1531F932A35751C1A964958260&pagewanted=all