This photo of a dog sled team going through some meltwater on ice in Greenland has made headlines….but it’s just a snapshot of one place, with summer approaching. Nothing really all that unusual is going on.
Melting as summer approaches is natural, and spikes of fast melting due to lack of cloud cover and clear skies are not unprecedented, as some overwrought people (Bill McKibben comes to mind) like to claim.
We’ve covered it before in 2012 – along with the same level of catastrophic squawking.
In the image above, you can see that there’s a quick batch of surface meltwater visible to satellite. The cause was simple, and not catastrophic. In fact, it happens regularly on century-long scales.
It turned out to be a weather event, unrelated to “climate change”. The next year, there was no “insta-melt“.
In fact. we’d not even know about the melting in Greenland before satellites came on the scene. So how many times in the history of the Earth has Greenland has a quick melt spike? I’m guessing hundreds of thousands of times.
Meanwhile, NASA Earth Observatory has this to say:
Major Greenland Glacier Is Growing
Jakobshavn Glacier in western Greenland is notorious for being the world’s fastest-moving glacier. It is also one of the most active, discharging a tremendous amount of ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet into Ilulissat Icefjord and adjacent Disko Bay—with implications for sea level rise. The image above, acquired on June 6, 2019, by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, shows a natural-color view of the glacier.
Jakobshavn has spent decades in retreat—that is, until scientists observed an unexpected advance between 2016 and 2017. In addition to growing toward the ocean, the glacier was found to be slowing and thickening. New data collected in March 2019 confirm that the glacier has grown for the third year in a row, and scientists attribute the change to cool ocean waters.
“The third straight year of thickening of Greenland’s biggest glacier supports our conclusion that the ocean is the culprit,” said Josh Willis, an ocean scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and principal investigator of the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission.
2016 – 2019 Download the large JPEG image
The maps above show how the glacier’s height changed between March 2016 and 2017 (top); March 2017 and 2018 (middle); and March 2018 and 2019 (bottom). The elevation data come from a radar altimeter that has been flown on research airplanes each spring as part of OMG. Blue areas represent where the glacier’s height has increased, in some areas by as much as 30 meters per year.
The change is particularly striking at the glacier’s front (solid blue area on the left) between 2016 and 2017. That’s when the glacier advanced the most, replacing open water and sea ice with towering glacial ice. The glacier has not advanced as much since then, but it continues to slow and thicken.
Willis compared the glacier’s behavior to silly putty. “Pull it from one end and it stretches and gets thinner, or squash it together and it gets thicker,” he said. The latter scenario is what is happening now as the glacier slows down: Notice that by the third year, thickening is occurring across an increasingly wide area.
Willis and colleagues think the glacier is reacting to a shift in a climate pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation, which has brought cold water northward along Greenland’s west coast. Measurements of the temperatures collected by the OMG team show that the cold water has persisted.
“Even three years after the cold water arrived, the glacier is still reacting,” Willis said. “I’m really excited to go back this August and measure the temperature again. Is it still cold? Or has it warmed back up?”
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey, and data courtesy of Josh Willis/NASA JPL and the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) Program. Story by Kathryn Hansen.
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This is easy:
When glaciers retreat this is a sign of global warming due to “melting”
When glaciers advance this a a sign of global warming due to “melting”
All the climate cult need to do is change what they say happens when glaciers melt. When convenient they retreat, when convenient the “melting” causes the rate of movement to increase.
Oh come on! that melt even was definitely an exceptional event… and you might look at the 2019 SMB chart too…
This one glacier is growing not because melt has slowed in Greenland, not because it is getting colder, but due to a temporary cooling of waters adjacent due to the NAO. It will reverse within a few years.
the argument of this piece is ‘look, we have proof Greenland ice cap isn’t melting!’ which is absolutely and incontrovertibly NOT the case.
Translation. Ignore the data, only look at the models.
BTW, over the last few years, the Greenland ice cap has been growing.
If no polar bears are around to see a glacier melt and no baby seal pups were there to hear the glacier melt did it really melt at all?
Griff, it’s only exceptional for the extremely myopic, like yourself.
The Danish meteorology and climate people at DMI havew few in common with alarmism.
But… here is their graph showing Greenland’s accumulated mass gain & loss balance sheet since last September:
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/surface/SMB_map_LA_acc_EN_20190619.png
This graphical balance sheet might be understandible for September, but isn’t for June.
That’s all.
It is as Mosher writes: you can’t simply select an isolated corner in space and time and derive a consistent meaning out of this little bit.
The dogs’ picture over melting ice and the pictures showing Jakobshavn’s advance are imho of exactly the same useless vein.
Rgds
J.-P. D.
Here is the sheet for 2018, June 19:
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/surface/SMB_map_LA_acc_EN_20180619.png
and that for 2012:
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/surface/SMB_map_LA_acc_EN_20120619.png
With regards to the dogs wading through water
After a bit research I came across an article from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources
I wonder if the more scientific posters on here can make anything of this?
“The final branch of the Gulf Stream swings around the southern tip of Greenland, at Cape Farewell, and flows up along the west coast of Greenland through Melville Bay and into Inglefield Bredning, where the current occurs as a relatively warm and saline core at a depth of approx. 300 m under the cold and relatively fresh surface water. The ocean current’s journey ends in the innermost part of the fjord, at 77 degrees north. The Atlantic Gulf Stream waters mix with meltwater and flow out of the fjord near the surface.
This blending of the waters deep in the fjord causes the Atlantic water to lose some of its warmth, making the sea ice thinner in the innermost part of the fjord. Here it is only roughly 70 cm thick, whereas it reaches a thickness of approx. 120 cm farther out because the ice towards the mouth of the fjord is protected by the cold layer of surface water.”
The McKibben graph at the top of the post is typical alarmist nonsense, comparing as it does a short term fluctuation with a longer term average. If like is compared to like the story looks different, see:
https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1139504432100597766
Last fall the DMI posted that the 2018 melt season was unusually cool, with a low melt and a higher than usual albedo.
The article also noted the same for 2017 summer.
Now Greenland has been warmer than usual.
Graphical catastrophic squawking…
0.42% of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) has melted since 1900!!!
The GrIS has lost the volumetric equivalent of a Lake Superior worth of ice!!!
Based on the asserted loss of ice since 1900, the GrIS has lost the equivalent of a Lake Superior-sized ice cube. However the GrIs remained larger than the Gulf of Mexico (by volume) despite losing a Lake Superior. The Gulf of Mexico has a volume of about 2.5 million km3. If the GrIS melted, the volume of water would be about 2.71 million km3. Before losing Lake Superior, the equivalent water volume was 2.72 million km3.
Catastrophic squawking, writ large…
Most of the melting since the beginning of the Holocene has occurred on the outboard, lower elevation portions of the GrIS – Same as it ever was. X-axis is in calendar years AD(BC). Elevation reconstruction data from Vinther et al., 2009. Map from Weißbach et al., 2015.
The image below is a GPR (ground-penetrating radar) cross-section of the GrIS. It is literally a work of art. GPR is analalogous in many ways to the reflection seismic data that we use in oil & gas exploration. If you click on this link, you will see a full-size image of the cross-section. Note that most of the ice is above the 12 ka horizon. This is very close to the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. It indicates that most of the ice was deposited since the end of the last Pleistocene glacial stage (ice age in layman’s terms).
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/22/a-geological-perspective-of-the-greenland-ice-sheet/
According to the “ice sheet goeth” graph, since 2001, Greenland lost about 3,600 gigatonnes of ice or about 3,840 km3 … That equates to a 16 km x 16 km x 16 km cube of ice (3√ 3,840 = 15.66). That’s YUGE! Right? Not really.
It’s not even a tiny nick when spread out over roughly 1.7 million square kilometers of ice surface. That works out a sheet of ice less about 2 meters thick… Not even a rounding error compared to the average thickness of the Greenland ice sheet.
The average thickness of the Greenland ice sheet is approximately 1.5 km (1,500 meters). 2 meters is about 0.15% of 1,500 meters.
From a thickness perspective, 2 meters looks like this:
When some actual perspective is applied, it is obvious that “the ice sheet goeth” nowhere:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05/01/alarmists-gone-wild-greenland-losing-400-1-cubic-km-ice-cubes-per-year/
Rate of ice melt is a function of temperature. It will speed up.
Faster than Milankovitch cycles? It can only melt a few months out of the year then gains back nearly everything it melted over winter. I think it will be around in nearly the same structure for many thousands of years. Much like the claims that Antarctica will melt down to nothing — the catastrophic claims are exaggerations and propaganda. Why do you think they need to use trickery like starting graphs in local maxima in order to show a decline? Why do you think they lie to you about the scale of loss and the actual nature of the change in the system?
Cooling temperatures make ice melt faster?
You mean if temps increase it will go from an infinitesimal melting over the last 120 years to a slightly less infinitesimal melting over the next 120?
Mods – Please elevate/promote to a post.
Great Post!
a 3D image of the ice sheet using the Ground Penetrating Radar of the GRIS and Antartica plus the other ice volumes of the earth would be priceless. In other words a viewable comparison and over time if we have it would answer the lying eyes thing. i. e. a counter to the famous polar bear picture and this “photoshopped or cropped dogs running on water” picture. These Cult Scientists argue so strongly and with such insulting “flat earthers” attacks because they view Global Warming, Climate Change, CO2 is poison, etc etc as attack on them their very identity. Because they take it as a part of them. You can’t have a discussion or debate with people protecting their own identity. That’s the problem here. Facts don’t matter even when it’s obvious. Thanks David Middleton. You can’t argue with that cross section and comparison to the historical record. Yet they do. 🙂 thanks again
This is a particularly good image…
One common feature of the various cross-sections is that the volume of Holocene ice appears to be as large or larger than the volume of Pleistocene ice. It’s particularly notable that in Central Greenland there is still a significant remnant of Eemian ice. In much of Central Greenland about 12,000 years worth of Holocene ice is thicker than over 100,000 years of Pleistocene ice. This is due to the fact that glacial stages (AKA ice ages) are very cold and very dry. The snow accumulation rate during the Holocene has been much higher than that of the last Pleistocene glacial stage.
David
And, the Holocene climate optimum may have melted a lot of the exposed Pleistocene ice.
GlennSliva
Show some respect for these dogs! Remember that “dog” is God spelled backwards. They are holy dogs that can run on water. Even Christ was not known for being able to RUN on water. That act requires webbed feet. They can’t convert water to wine, but they do have the ability to turn the water yellow, at least temporarily. The Cult Scientists should bow-wow down to these divine creatures.
Those are excerpts of previous posts of mine.
Its worse than we thought!
Think of the children!
Anthony
BBC News covered a story about cold war satellite imagery of the Himalayas being used to show the extent of glacier retreat. No mention that the period in question was cold in more ways than just international politics.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48696023
We could be having our leg pulled here. Bredning in Danish means ‘broadening’ as in a strait or a gulf.
As opposed to a fiord.
They caption as the “Inglefield Bredning fjord”, however there seems to be no such place. There IS however an Inglefield Gulf, with several fiords and glaciers running into it. I would appear that at this time of the year the gulf is usually mainly open water.
Google Translation of the article below:
A broadening denotes a larger open water area in connection with a healthy or other narrow waters. In Denmark, broads are known from fjords and healthy. Widenings can be how narrow waters expand, they can be an extension of other widenings or they can border up to the open sea.
A 19th century map is here:
.jpg)
Google translatyish. There are two homophone words “sund” in danish, one means healthy, the other a strait.
When using Google’s translator, the best is to switch back and forth two times.
This avoids unnecessary surprises.
It seems Inglefield Bredning ‘fjord’ is something of a misnomer.
There IS an Inglefield Gulf, and the word ‘bredning’ in Danish means broadening, or gulf.
Inglefield Gulf is apparently largely open water at this time of the year.
A broadening denotes a larger open water area in connection with a sound or other narrow waters. In Denmark, broads are known from fjords and healthy. Widenings can be how narrow waters expand, they can be an extension of other widenings or they can border up to the open sea.
(In geography, a sound is a large sea or ocean inlet, deeper than a bight and wider than a fjord; or a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of land (see also strait). There is little consistency in the use of “sound” in English-language place names. Contents. 1 Overview; 2 Etymology; 3 Bodies of water called sounds.)
Bredning
En bredning betegner et større åbent vandområde i forbindelse med et sund eller andet smalt farvand. I Danmark kendes bredninger fra fjorde og sunde. Bredninger kan være hvor smalle farvand udvider sig, de kan være i forlængelse af andre bredninger eller de kan grænse op til åbent hav.
I Limfjorden er bredning en hyppigt benyttet betegnelse og af kendte bredninger i Limfjorden kan fx nævnes Nibe Bredning, Halkær Bredning og Thisted Bredning.
Ingefield Gulf is still mostly ice-covered, but the snow has largely melted:
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=arctic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Reference_Labels(hidden),Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines&t=2019-06-17-T00%3A00%3A00Z&z=3&v=-622006.5566709061,-1307238.5388771605,-447158.55667090614,-1227238.5388771605
No-one asked the vital question is the fishing any good?
Easy.
Even though most of the world is warming, some places are warming and some are cooling all the time. Such as when 1934 was one of the hottest years in US history, but not globally. And when the Vikings had their colony in Greenland.
In addition, there are regions deep in Greenland and Antarctica where it is not yet warm enough for the ice to melt but have warmed enough to get more snow. I have no doubt that the same thing happened in what is now the center of Canada when the Wisconsin glacier started to melt.
James P. Yushchyshyn
A fair, sober comment.
Meltwater pools on sea-ice is of course perfectly normal, and has always occurred. For example read Nansen’s description of their problems sedding over the ice North of Franz Josephs Land in 1895. There was so much water that at times they had to use kayaks to cross. At last they gave up and lay still until the snow had melted and the water had drained away. This was in late June at 82 degrees north.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34120
Or read this:
“Note that sea ice thickness cannot be accurately measured from CryoSat during the Arctic summer period (May-Sept), due to the formation of melt ponds on the sea ice surface. ”
http://www.cpom.ucl.ac.uk/csopr/seaice.html
Incidentally this meltwater is the explanation why multi-year ice is harder and more durable. The fresh water from melted snow drains away through the salty first-year ice and leaches away most of the salt which means that second year and older ice is virtually salt-free.
Back in 2012 the discovery old Danish photos from the 1930’s showed similar melt. It was discussed here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/30/old-aerial-photos-supply-new-knowledge-on-glaciers-in-greenland/
Mr Layman here.
Ice melt before satellites.
As I recall a number of WWII planes have been “dug up” and recovered from Greenland glaciers. My impression has been that they were under ice due to snow falling on them and then being compressed by more snow into ice.
Has anyone checked to see if they sank into the ice as it melted then refroze?
Honest question.
Your impression is correct. That is how glaciers work. You can even count the annual layers of snow, and even the occasional brief melt episodes which leave thin telltale ice layers in the snow.
Falsehood will fly, as it were, on the wings of the wind, and carry its tales to every corner of the earth; whilst truth lags behind ; her steps though sure, are slow and solemn, and she has neither vigour nor activity enough to pursue and overtake her enemy.
Thomas Francklin 1787
Mike McHenry, Gunga Din
This question of whether it was warmer in the Arctic in the 1930s than it has now, has already given rise to many comments.
In fact, there must have been very warm months there; Finally, there were even pictures of submarines that broke through the then very thin ice cover at the North Pole.
Here is a graph showing the GHCN daily station temperatures for the globe and for the Arctic from Jan 1900 to Dec 2018:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mzsc3xcghxFyA66l6zgouKVg4r7_rE6C/view
And as you can see, some months in earlier times have been warmer than at present, as can be seen on the top 20 list of the warmest months during the inspected period:
1937 1 4.8
1981 1 4.4
2016 2 3.7
2017 12 3.7
1944 12 3.5
2016 1 3.3
1930 1 3.1
1938 11 3.0
2011 12 3.0
2007 1 3.0
1995 4 2.9
1943 4 2.9
2017 3 2.8
1934 2 2.8
1977 1 2.8
2016 3 2.7
2018 2 2.7
1914 12 2.6
2012 2 2.6
1953 4 2.6
But: the averaging over 5 years (dark red curve) reveals that the long-term trend was nevertheless cooler than now.
Overwrought Bill might want to keep his charting app on warm standby in his Taskbar.
Because when temperatures return to normal next week, melting of the foot of fresh snow that fell on Athabasca Glacier to mark the last day of spring in Canada is liable to produce another Gore-Line charting opportunity.
https://www.banffjaspercollection.com/plan-your-trip/webcams/#/0
The growth in height of the Jacobshavn glacier does make it look less like a hockey stick:
Note that the graph in the McKibben tweet shows data only to about June 10, even though it was written on June 18. The current curve is here: http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/ It shows that the ice has mysteriously “refrozen”, back into the gray variability region.
https://lnkd.in/eKQh9MD
MELTING AND DEICING ARE TWO SEPARATE PROCESSES. DEICING HAPPENING DUE TO CONCENTRATED DEICERS FROM PERSIAN GULF BRINGING BY HURRICANES. AFTER HURRICANES, EVEN DURING WINTER, EMPHASIS ADDED, ICE SHELVES ARE DEICING BY CONCENTRATED DE-ICERS. DETECTED 30, 000 ppm of Sodium Chloride and 7,100 ppm of Magnesium Chloride. By errecting ZERO DISCHARGE SYSTEMS in Desalination plants all CALAMITIES including Global warming, Sea Level Raise, INTENSITIES 0F HURRICANES, De-icing of Ice SHELVES in ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC CAN BE ELIMINATED , MORE ICE MASSES MEANS 3°C TEMPERATURES REDUCTION———>>>>>>> AIR CONDITIONING THE MOTHER EARTH
Dr. Raveendran Narayanan USA
#unep #epa #environmentalprotection #climatechange #globalwarming #un #google #wordpress #linkedin #ipcc #wef #rewrittingearthscience #notco2 #idadesal #unohchr #aig #nasa #noaa #1000ppmco2noproblem #nobelpeace #nobelpeacecommittee #pulitzerprize #stopsearaisenow #chile2019 #airconditioningthemotherearth #unfcc #stoppingcalamites #iachr #who #2019earthsciencecommettee #challengingexpertglaciologists #raveendrannaray #parisagreement
#worldwaterresearcher #waterprize
If “Greenland is catastrophically melting”, how do alarmists explain no change in the rate of sea level rise?
I think if all sceptics joined the believers they will not have any bull shite to report to us and will all be out of a job and on the dole
Satellite photographs on May 31 2019 show Inglefield Gulf (where Qaanaaq is now located) covered in perfectly white sea-ice. The satellite photos are spoiled by cloud for the next few days. Then on June 7th the sea-ice has acquired a turquoise tinge. The best view is on June 10.
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=arctic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Reference_Labels(hidden),Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines&t=2019-06-10-T00%3A00%3A00Z&z=3&v=-805360.1863561721,-1416939.8385886924,-313840.1863561721,-1170411.8385886924
But if we go back through the years on the same website we find almost identical occurrences on June 10 2006, June 10 2011, and (especially) June 10 2012.
Based on a scan of MODIS satellite photos from 2000 onwards, it seems that the meltwater on the sea-ice in Inglefield Gulf causes that beautiful turquoise colour almost EVERY YEAR.
Check out:
June 10 2019, June 14 2018, June 29 2017
June 15 2016, June 27 2015, June 17 2014
June 13 2013, June 10 2012, June 10 2011
June 23 2009, June 12 2008, June 15 2007
June 10 2006, June 23 2004, June 06 2003
June 20 2002.
NOT “unprecedented”! NOT extraordinary!
SHHHH!! You’re ruining the narrative! You don’t want those unwashed Stinky Rebellion people coming around, do you??