Guest essay by David Archibald
One thing that climate rationalists and warmers can agree on is that we all would like to have a healthy Greenland Ice Sheet. The good news on that front is that the ice sheet has put on 500 Gt this year as per this diagram provided by the Danish Meteorological Institute:
Figure 1: Total daily contribution to the surface mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet
The ice sheet is on track to add 500 Gt this year. It was given a big push along by a large storm in October 2016. Most of that was added on the southwest flank as shown by Figure 2.
Figure 2: Map of the accumulated surface mass balance (in mm water equivalent) from September 1st, 2016 to August 11th, 2017.
All this means that the shrinkage of the Greenland Ice Sheet since the beginning of the millenium is now over. Unfortunately now that the ice sheet has stopped shrinking, the NOAA has stopped updating their diagram. But, armed with the 500 Gt figure provided by the Danish meteorologists, we can make a stab at it:
Figure 3: Monthly change in the total mass (in Gigatonnes) of the Greenland ice sheet between April 2002 and June 2016
The red crosses denote the values for the month of April of each year. The other result of this turnaround in the Greenland Ice Sheet is that sea level will be falling, not rising.
The colder weather that is good for the Greenland Ice Sheet is bad for the Corn Belt though. As this article says, many farmers in the Upper Midwest are becoming increasingly concerned about the possibility of an early frost. Temperatures in that region are expected to trend well below normal the second half of September, with the potential for a season-ending freeze somewhere between the 15th and 20th.
So let’s look at the corn crop progress for Wisconsin as up to August 6th:
Figure 4: Wisconsin corn crop progess and condition
A frost hitting on 15th September would be when only 25% of the crop is mature.
David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare
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The ice sheet can show an increase in SMB, but still be losing volume.
The two charts above are not incompatible and are showing different things… the volume is likely to still be decreasing despite this winter’s unusually high precipitation (snowfall)
Look at what the DMI says about SMB:
“For an ice sheet that neither grows or shrinks, there is at all points averaged over the year a balance between
the amount of snow that falls and is compressed to ice
the amount of snow and ice that melts or evaporates (sublimates) and
the amount of ice that flows away due to the ice motion
The two first contributions make up the surface mass balance. For the ice sheet as a whole, there is a balance between the surface mass balance and the amount of ice that calves into the ocean as icebergs.
If climate changes, the surface mass balance may change such that it no longer matches the calving and the ice sheet can start to gain or lose mass. This is important to keep track of, since such a mass loss will lead to global sea level rise. As mentioned, satellites measuring the ice sheet mass have observed a loss of around 200 Gt/year over the last decade.”
this is the key:
“the surface mass balance may change such that it no longer matches the calving and the ice sheet can start to gain or lose mass”
Melting is accelerating loss thru Greenland’s glaciers… despite the SMB, the ice sheet decreases
As you well know by now, griff
Greenland Ice area is only just a tiny amount down from its highest extent in 8000 years.
Its ANOMALOUSLY HIGH !!
Any losses are purely and simply a RECOVERY from the extreme highs of the Little Ice Age, the COLDEST period in 10,000 years.
Nothing to get all chicken-little about. !!
And it would almost certainly be beneficial to those living there for the amount of ice to decrease a bit further… say back to the levels of the MWP?
But you don’t care about what might be beneficial to people, do you griff..
just so long as you can keep up your child-minded panic.
Life must be very hard for you, perpetually in manic fear of a tiny amount of beneficial ice loss.
So in your long life you have never seen a forgotten tray of ice cubes in your freezer sublimate away to useless slivers? Or do you go through several trays a day.
PS Same thing happens to those in the bin under the automatic Ice Maker. Pull it out and dig around in it. I have even watched the ice on my driveway (north side and in the shade) disappear in a few hours from just the wind. Thus, I conclude that quite a bit will sublimate away just due to the sun shining on it.
Also, Why have you not listed the effects of volcanoes under this ice? Especially since they just recently discovered 90+ volcanoes under the Antarctic, causing problems down there. Seeme to me that these could easily cause more havoc than the doubling of the level of CO2. At least they are looking for them down there unlike simply claiming there are none under the ice in Greenland.
AndyG55 August 14, 2017 at 6:59 am
As you well know by now, griff
Greenland Ice area is only just a tiny amount down from its highest extent in 8000 years.
Its ANOMALOUSLY HIGH !!
Any losses are purely and simply a RECOVERY from the extreme highs of the Little Ice Age, the COLDEST period in 10,000 years.
Presumably you’re basing this on your fake graph with the incorrect annotations?
As I pointed out above, that graph (min area 1.8 million km^2) is incompatible with the present area (1.7 million km^2) and it’s impossible to make any realistic conclusion from it.
Exactly:
Current Greenland IS area is put at 1.7 mil km^2 – which puts it below any point the graph from Briner et al.
Who also say …
“. The Greenland Ice Sheet retracted to its
minimum extent between 5 and 3 ka, consistent with many sites from around Greenland depicting a
switch from warm to cool conditions around that time. The spatial pattern of temperature change
through the Holocene was likely driven by the decrease in northern latitude summer insolation through
the Holocene, the varied influence of waning ice sheets in the early Holocene, and the variable influx of
Atlantic Water into the study region”
So – no “recover from the LIA” … seems a plunge below the lowest area since … well, who knows how many Kyrs… but as Phil says “it’s impossible to make any realistic conclusion from it.”
“Melting is accelerating loss thru Greenland’s glaciers”
LIAR.
Greenland ice sheet contribution to sea level rise:
1920-1940 = 1.1 cm
1993-2010 = 0.39 cm
Two times faster in the past
http://notrickszone.com/2017/08/07/since-1993-greenlands-ice-sheet-melt-has-added-just-0-39-of-a-centimeter-to-global-sea-levels/#sthash.5QxMDFna.dpbs
Decline in Greenland ice mass since 1900 extremely alarming!!!
Greenland ice balance is estimated, not measured. And the estimation is directed to close the sea level budget.
What is clear is that 2017 is a significant departure from previous years. I don’t think we can know with certainty if the total balance will be positive this year. Nor it matters much. Fears of Greenland melting are totally unjustified. Greenland melted 125,000 years ago. It wasn’t the end for polar bears. It won’t melt in the present interglacial, that with all that CO2 is cooler.
Yes but Griff claims the melt is accelerating, but he forgot the minus sign.
“Melting is accelerating loss thru Greenland’s glaciers..”
Griff is an ignorant acolyte. He provides amusement for WUWT.
Griif is also a serial slanderer as proven here time and time again by his own posts.
Remember that the SMB is only 2 of the 3 elements affecting the amount of ice in the Greenland ice sheet…
The fact that we argue about the size of the ice sheet in Greenland from year to year means that the terrorists have won.
How do you measure this. A yard stick,,,,,or a dipstick?
DMI revised their page earlier this year to alter some graphs that weren’t alarmist enough. And they keep the 2012-2012 yearly accumulation line with its large loss even though many of the recent years have not exhibited the same large loss. What are the odds that next year the 2011-2012 line will still be there, but the 2016-2017 line won’t be?
http://web.archive.org/web/20170210141439/http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
OH, puh-leeeeezzz!! Early frost? Like, when? August? Only in Wyoming or Montana.
Farmer’s Almanac says “clearing and COLD Sept. 24-27″ in Great Lakes/Ohio Valley & Midwest, while in the Plains for the same period, mostly ‘severe thunderstorms, possible tornadoes”. They predict unsettled weather, some wet snow in higher elevations of Montana the last week of September, but that’s not the Corn Belt, is it ? Naw, it isn’t.
Farmer’s Alamanac has this for October 20-23 GLakes/Ohio Valley/Midwest: Severe thunderstorms, clearing and unseasonably cold with a widespread frost.
Sorry, don’t have this year’s Old Farmer’s Almanac. Got busy and forgot to buy it.
It seems as if these “experts” (is that another term for desk jockey?) have forgotten or don’t know that most of the weather in the Midwest and Plains States comes generally from the northwest, not from Greenland’s icy fields, and is stirred by winds from the southwestern CONUS. They could look at a weather or wind map occasionally instead of computer models. In the summer, the warmer air from the southwest flows northward. In the winter, the infamous Alberta clipper comes shrieking like a banshee out of the northwest, across the Arctic from Siberia.
So if the Farmer’s Almanac is right and those Science Guys are wrong, do I get a prize? (snerrkkk!)
I’ve spent my whole life in the Midwest, at least third of it south of me in the Corn Belt. Now I live 35 miles north of Chicago, 3.5 miles west of Lake Michigan. The lake is more likely to influence Midwestern summers than Greenland, for Pete’s sake. It depends on how strong the southbound flow is when there’s a plume of air flowing down from the north. The Beastly Blizzard of February 2011 didn’t come from Greenland. It came from a large volume of cold air flowing southwest from Siberia.
Seriously, we’re getting nice, cool pre-autumn weather now. Two summers in a row with cooler weather is nice, and the spat of beastly cold and snow last December was supplanted by a mild, damp winter. I’m hoping for a replay of the mild, damp winter this time around. I’ll leave the light on for you.
Dad-burn it, didn’t proof read: “cold air flowing southwest from Siberia” – that should be southEAST from Siberia. Sorry. My bad. Must deprive self of chocolate ice cream for a few minutes.
David,
That large storm in October 2016 you mentioned was the remnants of Hurricane Nicole, described as the longest-lived Atlantic named storm forming after October 1 since 1906.
Remnants of Hurricane “Nicole” to hit Greenland and Iceland
Good point about how the remnants of large storms can, and do, have a large effect in other places of the planet from where they originate (or have the most “impact”.) And precisely why it will be interesting in about a week’s time as to what results from the remains of Tropical Storm Gert off the eastern Bahamas as it gets picked up and transported rapidly to the NE:
https://weather.com/storms/hurricane-central/AL082017
NASA’s GRACE satellite data isn’t showing much of a change in the rate of ice loss for Greenland up through their January 2017 data point. The trend is -286 Gigatonnes per. The loss rate increased a little between 2010 and 2013, but for the last few years it looks similar to the loss rate between 2002 and 2010.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/land-ice/
Is GRACE any good at ice, being designed for ocean level gravity changes. It has been debunked for Antarctica…..
It is much more reliable for Greenland where the GIA uncertainty is much less. GRACE raw data for Antarctica aren’t significantly different from zero.
And I would be prepared to listen to the Upper Midwest Farmers, after looking at the Growth Map…..
what is 500gt of ice?
is that about 1 foot of ice across the whole icecap?
A little more, about 13 inches for an average density of glacier ice of 0.91.
FLASH! Unprecedented summer snowfall in Greenland. Icecap increases 4 GT in a single day.
(well, it actually is unprecedented at least since 1980, which is more than you can say for most CAGW “unprecedented” things)
It would be worth asking the question: so, how come there was so much snowfall across Greenland (and the Central Arctic) last winter… and looking hard at changes in the region when trying to find the answer.
Hey Griff, you keep saying the ice cap is melting at a dangerous rate so when is it going to disappear? Tony M. bet me the North pole would be Ice free this year and if he loses he will never post on WUWT again. How about you give me the date you think the North pole will be ice free and I’ll bet you, whatever date that is, that it won’t be ice free, the loser leaves WUWT for good.
The change in the Greenland smb gains started 3 winters ago. The second of the 3 winters was larger than the first, and now this 3rd winter has led to a massive gain in smb which is stil maintaining well above average levels. Two months ago I forecast that the Greenland melt would likely end early, perhaps by the middle of August. Here we are, and that forecast is now a strong probability that the smb has reached bottom. The reason why has to do with the ever evolving surface wind changes in the arctic region
Today’s change is most interesting as a block has developed south of Greenland which is keeping surface winds from moving north up the Atlantic, and into the Eastern Arctic. That will have cooling consequences. The change is happening right in front of our eyes. …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-0.51,59.48,497/loc=-13.968,51.818
+10
“Unfortunately now that the (Greenland) ice sheet has stopped shrinking, the NOAA has stopped updating their diagram. ”
If a supposed scientific organisation pushes a narrative against evidence, is that scientific? What if it suppresses facts to keep its narrative alive? Would you call that reprehensible? criminal even? In science isn’t evidence supposed to make the narrative? Isn’t evidence supposed to be king?
Richard August 16, 2017 at 12:23 pm
“Unfortunately now that the (Greenland) ice sheet has stopped shrinking, the NOAA has stopped updating their diagram. ”
As I pointed out above that statement isn’t true. Hopefully GRACE will last another year (already way beyond its design lifetime) to allow continuity with its successor mission.