From Cornell University and the Department of Inflated Headlines come this misleading claim that really should be anything new, and certainly not “groundbreaking” as they claim in this press released. After all, the tops of glaciers have been melting in the summer and making runoff meltwater which finds its way to the bottom of glaciers through natural crevices for millions of years. This is nothing but hype to make it seem “worse than we thought”.
Atmospheric warming heats the bottom of ice sheets, as well as the top
ITHACA, N.Y. – A team of scientists led by Cornell University Earth and Atmospheric Sciences researcher Michael Willis, has published a new paper showing for the first time that meltwater from the surface of an ice cap in northeastern Greenland can make its way beneath the ice and become trapped, refilling a subglacial lake. This meltwater provides heat to the bottom of the ice sheet.
These groundbreaking findings provide new information about atmospheric warming and its affect on the critical zone at the base of the ice. The warmth provided by the water could make the ice sheet move faster and alter how it responds to the changing climate.
The research is detailed in a new paper published online by the journal Nature on Jan. 21. The paper was written by Willis, who is also an adjunct faculty member in the geological sciences department at UNC-Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences, along with co-authors Bradley Herried, Polar Geospatial Center, University of Minnesota; Michael Bevis, School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University and Robin Bell, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.
“We’re seeing surface meltwater make its way to the base of the ice where it can get trapped and stored at the boundary between the bedrock beneath the ice sheet and the ice itself. As the lake beneath the ice fills with surface meltwater, the heat released by this trapped meltwater can soften surrounding ice, which may eventually cause an increase in ice flow,” said Willis.
The direct link between the surface meltwater and the filling of a lake at the base of the ice has never been seen before. Over the last few years the number of lakes on the surface of the Greenland ice sheet has greatly increased. Surface lakes are also occurring much farther inland at higher altitudes than in the past. If this mechanism of transferring water and warmth from the surface lakes to the bottom of the ice sheet is common then the Greenland Ice Sheet is likely to respond more rapidly to climate change than is currently predicted.
The Greenland ice sheet comprises about 80 percent of the land mass of Greenland and previous studies have documented that the ice sheet is melting at a faster rate due to climate change. The movement of meltwater beneath the ice sheet, from the interior to the ocean, is the topic of many investigations as it can control the speed at which the ice sheet moves. This is the first study to document that surface water can penetrate to the bottom of an ice cap and be trapped in place. Researchers say this process could also occur at other large bodies of ice.
The study was sparked in 2012 when Willis was mapping ice changes around the edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet as part of a study funded by U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to understand how much of the accelerating ice loss in Greenland is caused by melting and how much is caused by the increase of ice moving into the ocean.
During his research, Willis spotted a 70-meter-deep hole (the equivalent of a 10-story building) that had formed when a subglacial lake, far beneath the ice surface, emptied in the late fall of 2011. Subglacial lakes are rare in Greenland, and the presence of such a lake in the far northeast came as a surprise. The ice in this region is much too slow, too cold and too thin to allow melting beneath the ice cap, which is how a subglacial lake usually forms.
Between 2012 and 2014, Willis watched as summer meltwater on the surface of the ice made its way down cracks around the hole and refilled the empty lake basin at the base of the ice cap. When water was flowing on the surface, the subglacial lake filled. When water stopped flowing on the surface, the subglacial lake stopped refilling.
“Each summer scientists see bright blue streams form on the surface of Greenland as warm air melts the ice sheet. What happens to this water when it disappears into cracks in the ice has remained a mystery.
“This discovery that water can be stored in lakes beneath the ice shows how the plumbing on the surface is linked to the plumbing at the base,” said co-author Robin Bell.
Willis and the researchers were able to pinpoint when the subglacial lake refilled using data collected from high-resolution satellite images from the University of Minnesota’s Polar Geospatial Center, as well as data from NASA’s operation IceBridge for calibration and verification.
The Cornell-led team calculated that the lake beneath the ice has filled about half way since its 2011 blowout that originally drove water from the lake at a volume of 215 cubic meters per second (nearly 57,000 gallons–close to the volume of a 30-foot-by-50-foot backyard swimming pool every second.) As the lake refills, the surface meltwater carries stored heat, called latent heat, along with it from the relatively warm atmosphere to the icy depths. This latent heat reduces the stiffness of the surrounding ice and makes the ice more likely to flow out to sea.
Even though researchers have long known of the existence of subglacial lakes, never before have they witnessed any refilling from the surface. The refilling signals to researchers that Greenland’s ice loss has likely reached a milestone.
“We can actually see the meltwater pour down into these holes and then watch these subglacial lakes drain out and fill up again in real time. With melting like that, even the deep interior of the ice sheet is going to change. If enough water is pouring down into the Greenland Ice Sheet for us to see the same subglacial lake empty and refill itself over and over, then there must be so much latent heat being released under the ice that we’d have to expect it to change the large-scale behavior of the ice sheet,” said study co-author Bevis.
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… meanwhile, in Iceland, lava flowing at an average of 50-70 cubic metres a second (has been/will and do for some time) is melting surface/near-surface snow and ice. This is causing a ‘trickle’ of unnoticed water because it cant be blamed on carbon dioxide.
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/iceland-the-real-land-of-fire-and-ice-volcano/#more-1707835
Perhaps Bill Nye and Al Gore could put together a lab demo to show the devastating effects these findings are having on the environment. They could use a heat lamp, acrylic blocks, and a bunch of tubes of KY. If they had any left over KY…. UH, never mind.
Or a lava lamp a and a couple of bongs…
It’s the “born yesterday syndrome”. You see it everywhere.
“This meltwater provides heat to the bottom of the ice sheet.”
Uh, have they not considered that Earth’s interior is also fairly hot and contributes/delivers heat to the bottom of the ice sheet. As the melt water travels down passages of ice for a long distance, it can be assumed that the water is near freezing by the time it gets to the lake. The ice sheet than acts as a thermal blanket, shielding the water from above, maybe even freezing it during the winter, depending, of course, on the heat flux from Earth’s interior. Yawn. So, what are they claiming?
Per:
http://www2.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Research-Review/Magazine/1997/story8.html
“What we see is that the outermost molecular film of ice solidifies only up to a point,” says Van Hove. “Large vibrational amplitudes continue to exist down to at least 90 K.”
==========
That might explain why skates have little friction, now I want someone to explain the metallic taste you get in your mouth when you take a bad fall and hit the back of your head.. hard.. on the ice.
I’ve only done it once (maybe twice), it tastes like copper (pennies).
Weird taste, and definitely an experience you look to avoid in the future.
Search with this string: metallic copper taste mouth concussion
Some folks think it is blood taste.
What is the temperature of the ice at depth? What is the solid-ice sheet temperature gradient in the winter?
If it is substantially below freezing at depth, that newly added water will freeze in the winter.
Can heat conduction up through the ice sheet in the cold winter remove the water’s latent heat and allow it to freeze? I’m thinking it can and likely does. Water turning to ice then helps lock the ice sheet in place on the bedrock.
Most of the Greenland ice-cap is warm-based, i. e. the basal temperature is over the pressure freezing point, and it always has been.
“there must be so much latent heat being released under the ice that we’d have to expect it to change the large-scale behavior of the ice sheet”
Ok… I expect no change…What do ya got in the way of science to say it should even be considered ……….Nuttin
What do I got to refute it…nuttin
Nice, back to square one, nothing learned, money wasted.
Does anybody wonder what the hell is going on in climate science…Can anybody just write a paper, get published , and say They “expect” something to happen. I expect a lot of things to happen, a lot of them don’t…some of them do..I “wonder” about these things so I call it “wondering”….others I guess call it science….These are bizarre times, truly.
Correction: Missing ‘not’ in first sentence:
“From Cornell University and the Department of Inflated Headlines come this misleading claim that really should NOT be anything new, and certainly not “groundbreaking” as they claim in this press released.”
Obvious, I know.
/Mr Lynn
“Between 2012 and 2014, Willis watched as summer meltwater on the surface of the ice made its way down cracks around the hole and refilled the empty lake basin at the base of the ice cap. When water was flowing on the surface, the subglacial lake filled. When water stopped flowing on the surface, the subglacial lake stopped refilling.”
Somehow I believe that the summer meltwater impact on the ice is much more complicated than the Authors claim. They previously mentioned that the ice thickness is 70 meters. With the technology they used, can they really know what is happening 70 meters below the surface as they describe it? Also It would seem to me that the water would refreeze as it traveled downward through 70 meters of ice well below 0 degrees Centigrade. When the water drains from the lake, does it leave a huge void under the ice mass and is the ice capable of bridging such a huge void without collapsing or causing subsidence at the surface?
If the sensing technology is relatively new or recently applied, how do we know this is a new happening?
One needs to be skeptical without a lot more information including the sensitivity and capability of the measurement procedure.
Finally It seems as though the global warming crowd have a plan to strategically release papers such as this on an interval to keep the hoax alive with the support of the media hyping the agenda. Your tax dollars at work.
‘During his research, Willis spotted a 70-meter-deep hole (the equivalent of a 10-story building) …’
Was that really necessary?
No, but it illustrative of the CAGW publicity stunts often used, always permitted in this community without care or regard. And the basic lack of care for accuracy in favor of publicity by these “scientists” of the CAGW religion.
Consider a “normal” urban building of 10 feet per “story”.
A 10 story building = 100 feet (street to roof) = 30.48 meters.
A 70 meter hole = 230 foot hole = 23 story building.
Oops.
Tall storeys?
It does depend on both tradition and culture: Let’s face it: “as tall as a ten story building” and “as long as a city block” and “the size of Manhattan” are really only New York writers’ terms. Nobody in the real world uses them. And they certainly are not calibrated terms. Unless you live in Manhattan in a 10 story building on a city block defined by the mayor of New York on a map drawn in the early 19th century.
The “usual” architect’s story height is 10 feet – measured between floors with a “typical” 8 foot ceiling height and a WF steel beam joist (beam) for each floor. Now, upscale suburban houses are trending towards a 10 foot ceiling height, but that’s ONLY because of fossil fuels and the few glorious McMansions squeezed together so the realtors can sell $500,000.00 homes on a small lot. )Almost all residential houses are 8 foot ceiling and a 2×4 ceiling joist – but New York writer’s don’t think of “those” as building height “stories” either. Basements are 8 foot clear height with a 2×10 nominal beam and a 3/4 or 1 inch floor board. And, of course, almost all American/Canadian/Australian houses are only one or two stories anyway, with an angled roof that doesn’t count either. Few European stand-alone houses are built prior to the 60’s and 70’s – and not many after that in fact. “Typical” Euro ceilings are also 8 – 10 feet clear (or less), and the older ones always tend towards the shorter values of course.
23 stories. Shows how good at simple arithmetic these guys are. I’m surprised they didn’t give an Empire State Building or Eiffel Tower equivalence.
Better yet, a Statue of Liberty equivalence.
Maybe ivory towers have higher ceilings to provide more headroom?
Michael Willis
“Over the last few years the number of lakes on the surface of the Greenland ice sheet has greatly increased. Surface lakes are also occurring much farther inland at higher altitudes than in the past.”
That means subglacial lakes are rare. If they are common or increasing, surface lakes would be decreasing as melt water at surface drains to subglacial lakes.
“Subglacial lakes are rare in Greenland, and the presence of such a lake in the far northeast came as a surprise. The ice in this region is much too slow, too cold and too thin to allow melting beneath the ice cap, which is how a subglacial lake usually forms.”
That’s why you saw only one subglacial lake after all these years. It is rare. So why are you surprised? That’s why you see many surface lakes. Surface melt water isn’t draining to subglacial lakes.
A moulin or glacier mill is a roughly circular, vertical to nearly vertical well-like shaft within a glacier …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moulin_(geology)
do an image search with glacier moulin
Friends
There is an important fact about ice being “lubricated” by water in addition to the excellent points made by several in this thread.
All water ice is coated with a liquid layer of water at all temperatures down to -40°C.
This property of water ice is why water ice is slippery, and this property is not new knowledge: it was first discovered and investigated by Michael Faraday.
So, the bottom of all glaciers is coated with a liquid layer of water because all glaciers are made of water ice. Hence, all glaciers are “lubricated” by water. The only way this lubrication could be increased is for liquid water to be forced beneath a glacier so as to raise the glacier above the contours of the surface beneath the glacier.
Richard
sorry old story
this has been happening for 15-25 million years
Antarctica’s almost 400 known subglacial lakes. Lake Vostok is located at the southern Pole of Cold,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok
If you visit an area that was covered by ice during the last ice age you will quite often find long (up to several hundred kilometers) ridges of sand and gravel. These are called “eskers” and were created by subglacial rivers. This was figured out already by 19th century geologists but is apparently unknown to these Cornell innocents. Don’t “climate scientists” ever read anything but IPCC reports?
Anyone thinking that this is something new is recommended to read A E Nordenskiöld’s description of his experiences during the first scientific expedition ever to actually penetrate the Greenland icecap in 1870 (near the end of the Little Ice Age):
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24365/24365-h/24365-h.htm#CHAPTER_IV
Then as now Nordenskiöld found the extensive melting of the ice-cap made it very difficult to travel over in the summer. The melt area with superglacial rivers and lakes extended to an altitude of c. 1500 meters (5000 feet). Here is a map showing these rivers and lakes from a later expedition to the same area in 1883:
http://runeberg.org/polexp1883/0233.html
http://runeberg.org/polexp1883/0234.html
(two halves)
Unfortunately this much more detailed description of conditions on the inland ice in 1883 has never been translated from Swedish, but here are some interesting pictures showing melt phenomena on the Greenland Icecap back at the end of the “Little Ice Age”
http://runeberg.org/polexp1883/0166.html
http://runeberg.org/polexp1883/0167.html
And here is an image illustrating the melting effect of “kryokonit”, i. e. dark mineral dust (nowadays popularily known as “black carbon”) found on the icecap, then as now:
http://runeberg.org/polexp1883/0244.html
Interesting image of Greenland’s bedrock topography, in reference to above discussion of topography:
Penn State and Cornell are Beavis and Butthead of the week. They think Davos is a IPCC Jamboree. So they rush out stupid press releases. Ha ha.
Grant farming at its ‘best ‘
Ah yes the same university that is fabricating science claiming that there is high correlation between earthquakes in Oklahoma and disposal wells. There IS a high correlation, if you ignore hundreds of the disposal wells that haven’t had earthquakes near them. Ivy League should stick to the pseudo sciences, like political science.
I look forward to your paper laying out the evidence that there is no correlation.
I found two references to “latent heat” in the article:
*****
As the lake refills, the surface meltwater carries stored heat, called latent heat, along with it from the relatively warm atmosphere to the icy depths. This latent heat reduces the stiffness of the surrounding ice and makes the ice more likely to flow out to sea.
If enough water is pouring down into the Greenland Ice Sheet for us to see the same subglacial lake empty and refill itself over and over, then there must be so much latent heat being released under the ice that we’d have to expect it to change the large-scale behavior of the ice sheet,” said study co-author Bevis.
*****
If these whizzes don’t know the difference between latent heat and sensible heat, something that I learned about in high school, how much can we depend on any of their other conclusions?
Ian M
One set of Warmists is telling us that seasonal melt water flows down through ice sheets.
Another set of Warmists solemnly tells us how accurate ice core samples are. Yea right.
Interesting logic.
Scientists tell us the Grand Canyon was eroded by water. Yet the very same scientists read the geologic record from the exposed rock strata. Yea right.
How many ice cores include evidence of refrozen waterfall filled crevasses?
So, what does this make out of ice core proxies? For example, the 280 ppm CO2 normal sooo long ago. Too funny.
Would alarmists find inner peace even by Greenland lakes freezing solid all the way to the ground?
They will never find inner peace. They are society’s misfits, who always look at the “carbon” rise as disastrous. But it isn’t.
The rise in CO2 is harmless, and it has brought about greatly increased agriclutural productivity. Real world evidence supports both those facts.
So skeptics are arguing with crazy misfits hwo select their ‘science’ based on confirmation bias: if a fact helps their doom-and-gloom beliefs, they repeat it. But if it shows that the rise in CO2 is completely harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere, they either ignore those facts or they argue emotionally.
Reblogged this on Norah4you's Weblog and commented:
The Alarmist never taken time to study GUS – the Garden Under Sandet – the farm under sand….. if they had, they wouldn’t have tried the ice melt hype at all. They had known from beginning that Empiric data show their so called thesis as wrong as can be – disapproven by facts…. 🙂
”Most of the Viking expansion took place during what scientist refer to as the dimatic optimum of the Medieval Warm Period dated ca, A.D. 800 to 1200 (Jones 1986: McGovern 1991); a general term for warm periods that reached chere optimum at different times across the North Atlantic (Groves and Switsur 1991). During this time the niean annual temperature for southem Greenland was 1 to 3°C higher than today.” Julie Megan Ross, Paleoethnobotanical Investigation of Garden Under Sandet, a Waterlogged Norse Farm Site. Western Settlement. Greenland (Kaiaallit Nunaata), University of Alberta, Department of Anthropology Edmonton. Alberta Fa11 1997, sid 40
My own comments in one of the articles where the quote above is made:
One of the most common pollens found during the excavation of the Garden of Sandet was Cyperaceae, if you read Linnaeus, the virutal Flora on net, Cyperaceae isn’t supposed to have existed at all in such environment. But then neither Bilberry, Sapsella bursa pastorais nor crowberry should have been able to make it. Then birch and willow not mentioned…those trees were common in Greenland during the earliest settling years and also during the later. In between it was even warmer….
—- from Äntligen efter 671 år blir det, Norah4you 1 december 2012