From LiveScience
By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | December 5, 2018 02:00pm ET
Each summer, large rivers emerge on the surface of Greenland, swiftly sending meltwater from the ice sheet into the sea.
Credit: Sarah Das/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Greenland is melting faster today than it has at any time in the last 350 years, and probably much longer, new research finds.
Surface melt from the icy island has increased 50 percent in the last 20 years compared with the early 1800s, before the industrial era, researchers report today (Dec. 5) in the journal Nature. The runoff alone is now contributing about a millimeter to the global average sea level per year, said study co-author Sarah Das, a glaciologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
“Climate change has hit Greenland very hard recently, and the ice sheet is responding quickly,” Das told Live Science. [Stunning Photos of Greenland’s Supraglacial Lakes]
Dire straits
Scientiststracking Greenland’s ice by satellite and on the ground have seenincreasingly dire ice loss. Greenland loses ice both when icebergs calve off glaciers and when ice on the surface melts and flows to the sea as water. The meltwater flow is how themajority of the ice vanishes, and that’s what Das and her colleagues focused on.
The researchers analyzed ice cores drilled from the high-elevation center of Greenland, where each year’s snowfall melts a little bit and refreezes before being covered by a new season’s worth of snow. This layered pattern allows researchers to estimate how much melt took place each year, going back about 350 years. The team was then able to use modern, precise measurements of melt and correlate those measurements with the pattern seen in the ice cores, which allowed them to estimate what melt at lower elevations across the island would have looked like in each year recorded in the high-elevation cores. [Images: Greenland’s Gorgeous Glaciers]
The numbers weren’t good. The last two decades of melt show an increase in the rate of melting of 250 percent to 575 percent compared with the preindustrial baseline from before the mid-1800s. The researchers found that the rate translated to a 50-percent increase in the runoff of meltwater into the sea compared with the preindustrial era. Over the 20th century alone, the runoff of meltwater increased 33 percent.
“We show that although melt started to increase around the pre- to post-industrial transition, it really stayed fairly low and stable until about the 1990s,” Das said. “So, it’s really been in the last couple of decades that we’ve seen this exceptional rise.”
Read the full story here.
HT/Clyde Spencer
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“Greenland is melting faster…”? Really? Literally “Greenland”?
Yeah, we know what they mean, but it’s this kind of sloppy language (and poor proofing) that contributes to diminished credibility of sources and the content of their publications.
The laws of physics would be broken if Greenland wasn’t losing ice faster than it was 350 years ago.
350 years ago was during the coldest phase of the entire Holocene.
In other words, they cherry picked the dates to make the changes look as bad as possible.
They also stopped collecting data at the height of the recent El Nino.
Plus 100
So, has anyone seen this extra mm of ocean rise anywhere?
I did, but by the time I reached into my pocket and took my phone out to get it on video, it had disappeared again.
Consarn it!
Greenland is melting faster today than it has at any time in the last 350 years.
When did the Little Ice Age start?
600-700 years ago…
so it’s getting warmer?
wait. You used anomalies. that means it cant be right
Well, at best it means it can’t be right if you are using the old fashion meaning of correct to any reasonable standard.
Melt rate has only been monitored for about 30 years but they’re CERTAIN the rate is faster than the last 350 years… 200 of which nobody even knew it was melting or had even laid eyes on it.
Riiiiiight.
This one needs a fraud charge.
I’m starting from a fairly well publicized, comprehensive study of Greenland ice melt somewhere around 10 years ago. Time to Greenland being “green” again: Centuries, if at all.
Their summary says-
“The runoff alone is now contributing about a millimeter to the global average sea level per year, said study co-author Sarah Das, a glaciologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.”
They estimate the runoff at 350 gigatons. So now we have a basic relationship been anual runoff amounts and ocean level.
Their report also clarifies-
“The amount of annual meltwater runoff from Greenland has increased from between 200 and 250 gigatons a year before humans started burning fossil fuels in large amounts to 350 gigatons a year today, Das and her colleagues reported. It takes about 360 gigatons of meltwater to raise the global sea level by a millimeter, Das said.”
So it looks like what they are trying to get across is that ~250 gigatons is normal (before people), and that the additional 100 gigatons is attributable to people warming up the arctic through their activities.
Of everything that adds to or deletes from the ocean’s water, the additional 100 Gigaton mass of fresh water (Greenland runoff) is equitable to 0.3 mm sea level increase.
That’s run-off, but how much snow is being added every year, and has that amount changed?
Warmer waters around Greenland should result in more snow on Greenland.
Did the article say anything about the multidecadal arctic oscillation? Greenland is significantly affected by this seesaw which was at one time thought to be a harbinger of human caused global climate warming. Until it reversed direction on Hansen leaving him red-faced.
Links
https://www.aer.com/science-research/climate-weather/arctic-oscillation/
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/JFM_season_ao_index.shtml
Greenland is often a bulls eye for this permanent atmospheric polar system. Any change in CO2 is buried deep within the overwhelming powerful natural variations. The alarmism amounts to someone swatting a fly and declaring it world news.
‘alarmism amounts to someone swatting a fly and declaring it world news.’
But that’s part of the art of lying while not stepping outside the literal truth – perspective and context.
“Greenland Is Melting Faster Than Ever”
I didn’t know that “ever” started just a few centuries ago.
It’s melt in 9500 years instead of 10,000.
Think of the great great grand children!
A) It’s all estimates based upon estimates. The reference to “modern, precise measurements” is a strawman dodge. Accuracy of measurement does not automatically correlate or lead into accuracy estimate.
B) “This layered pattern”, meaning layers of frozen water are accumulating. If they are accumulating, they are not melting faster than their accumulation.
C) It is unstated exactly how they determine the age of the layers or whether layers are missing or accumulated more than a layer per year.
D) “allowed them to estimate what melt at lower elevations across the island would have looked like in each year recorded in the high-elevation cores“; a claim that sounds like a “model”. i.e. another programmed daydream turned into press release research.
The last two decades of melt show an increase in the rate of melting of 250 percent to 575 percent compared with the preindustrial baseline from before the mid-1800s
—
Greenland is melting much faster than during the LIA. Okay then.
The runoff alone is now contributing about a millimeter to the global average sea level per year, said study co-author Sarah Das, a glaciologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
—
RUN!
Naw – I’m an old man. I’ll just stand here. So at 25mm per inch my 3″ duck boots will keep my feet dry for about 75 years. I’ll be >150 yo by then. Probably won’t care anymore.
Just checked the DMI for the current greenland Ice budget for this year…..Completely normal
Sad really, I used to like singing Heber’s ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains, From India’s coral strand, Where Afric’s sunny fountains, Roll down their golden sand…’
… where they 2 snowfalls last winter, and one already this year.
See: http://www.thegwpf.com/greenland-ice-sheet-sixth-highest-on-record/
This looks like a case of cherry picking data.
– 350 years ago was the peak of the little ice age. Why not go back further to the Medieval Warming period when the Vikings had farming communities on Greenland?
– Likely that they picked 2016, the very warm El Nino year as the last year of their comparison and not the last two years:
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/08/greenland-gains-huge-amounts-of-ice-for-the-second-year-in-a-row/
So Real Soon Now I should be able to buy beachfront property for a song as the sea levels are going to rise really really fast? Yeah, I didn’t think so…
Why do alarmist love to point out melting glaciers as a problem. Isn’t it called an interglacial period for that exact reason?
I saw Judith Curry explain perfectly to Michael Mann why Greenland was melting faster than the rest of the world. Had something to do with the atlantic decadal oscillation being in its warm faze. I wonder why they never mentioned that in the article? Sarc!
As long as Viking settlements keep appearing from under the ice, I am not going to worry about Greenland’s ice melting.
Greeland is just following natural variability that governs the North Hemisphere’s temperature trends. Since the ~60 year AMO periodicity characteristic for the NH is at its peak the next 30 years will lead to some cooling but the exetent of it depends on if and when the next solar grand minimum occus. In this link
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/NH-GM.htm
I looked at possible alternatives:
– If the grand minimum doesn’t start during next 4-5 cycles than cooling will be minimal, about 0.2- 0.3 degrees (faint blue line)
– Since grand minima tend to last (intriguingly?) around 60 years, if a GM is about to start with SC25 then it’s greatest effect might coincide with the AMO just lifting of the floor with total fall of about 0.7- 0.8, since the cumulative solar GM cooling is about 0.5C (dark green line).
However there is an elephant in the room, nothing to do with the CO2, in form of a undercurrent periodicity which is due to peak in about 60 to 70 years, by that time the AMO will be hitting next peak and any pending solar GM may well be over, resulting in the temperature rise of about 0.5C on the current level. It could be expected that it gets up to about 1.5C on preindustrial levels. From there on is all way down hill. Our grand or great grandchildren will be told that the CO2 restrictions were fully justified.
The CO2 obsession/social mania will be in the waste bin alongside eugenics i less than 50 years.
We’re in a warm phase. The last climate phase was cold. They occur constantly and are part of normal cycles of warm and cold climate. We have ZERO control over them. They will occur with or without our existence.
What is the REAL problem here? Fear of lack of control of something we can’t control anyway?
“Greenland Is Melting Faster Than Ever”
Sarah Das said that
“No it’s not”
I said that
What is happening is all natural and has nothing to do with mankind. For example the previous inter glacial period, the Eemian, was warmer than this one with more ice cap melting and higher sea levels yet CO2 levels were lower than today. The cause of the climate change we are experiencing today is the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. The current modern warm period is not much different than the previous Medieval warm period. More melting should be taking place during the Modern Warm Period when compared to the Little Ice Age. We need not worry because the next ice age will cause ice sheets to build up and sea levels will drop however it may be thousands of years before that really begins to happen. We need to enjoy the current inter glacial period as long as it lasts.