Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Charles the Moderator has been doing a fantastic job of keeping WUWT humming along, and deserves everyone’s thanks. Today he sent me an interesting article thinking I might want to comment on it. It has the usual kind of alarmist headline, viz:
Greenland lost 11 billion tons of surface ice in one day
YIKES! EVERYONE PANIC!
Now, I’ve gotta admit that that sounds like a lot of ice, eleven billion with a “b” tonnes melted in one single day. However, I’m a tropical boy, so I’m kinda prejudiced in these matters. Here’s my conflict of interest statement. When I’m in a place where the ice jumps up out of my adult beverage and starts running around the landscape, I consider that to be “water behaving badly” whether it’s one cube or eleven billion tonnes, and I try to avoid such locations … but I digress.
To return to the question, is eleven billion tons of ice really a big number or not?
Well, to start with, it’s a one-day loss in the warmest part of the year. Snow builds up on the ice sheet in the winter, and melts, sublimates, and is lost in icebergs in the summer. So this one-day loss tells us very little about the longer-term changes, what is called the “mass balance” of an ice sheet over an entire year or a longer period.
So what is happening in the longer term? A source for some information on this question is the Polar Portal. There’s a good article to start with, the annual report for 2018. (It also has an interesting article on the various phenomena involved in the mass balance here.)
Let me start with a look at the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet since 1972. Here’s that data.
From that data, we find that the 1981 – 2010 thirty-year average mass balance for the Greenland ice sheet was a net loss of 103 billion tonnes. Again, this is a very large number, it seems like a big deal that would demand our attention … but is it really?
In order to ask the question “How big is 103 billion tonnes?”, we have to ask a related question:
“Compared to what?”
In this case, the answer is, “Compared to the total amount of ice on Greenland”.
Here’s one way of looking at that. We can ask, IF Greenland were to continue losing ice mass at a rate of 103 billion tonnes per year, how long would it take to melt say half of the ice sheet? Not all of it, mind you, but half of it. (Note that I am NOT saying that extending a current trend is a way to estimate the future evolution of the ice sheet—I’m merely using it as a way to compare large numbers.)
To answer our question if 103 billion tonnes lost per year is a big number, we have to compare the annual ice mass loss to the amount of ice in the Greenland ice sheet. The Greenland ice sheet contains about 2.6E+15 (2,600,000,000,000,000) tonnes of water in the form of snow and ice.
So IF the Greenland ice sheet were to lose 103 billion tonnes per year into the indefinite future, it would take about twelve thousand five hundred years to lose half of it …
And even if the loss were to jump to ten times the long-term average, it would still take twelve hundred years to melt half the ice on the Greenland ice sheet. Even my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren won’t live long enough to see that.
However … there has been no big trend in mass losses in Greenland. As you can see in the graph above, it went down starting in 1980 but has generally risen since about 2010 … go figure.
Let me close with another way to visualize the mass loss of the Greenland ice sheet using two graphs. The first graph shows the cumulative loss over the forty-six year period of the record. This is how it would commonly be shown.
It’s shown that way because, well, it looks pretty scary. It looks like the ice sheet is about to disappear.
By contrast, here’s a more honest way to display the loss, by showing not the annual or cumulative anomalies, but instead showing the changes in the total mass of the Greenland ice sheet:
Not as scary, huh?
As a result, I’d say that there’s no need to worry about Greenland at this time. As Sanjeev Sabhlok recently wrote in a most reasonable article in the Times of India:
The best policy today is to (a) abandon socialism (Why does IPCC not talk about this ideology which is causing mankind the most harm?), and (b) to do everything possible to maximize the wealth of the current generations. Then review the [climate and energy] situation in 2050 when more data and new technologies become available.
In the meanwhile, there’s no harm in installing as many nuclear plants as are viable and growing more trees. And we can keep researching alternative energy technologies. However, interventions to divert precious resources into uneconomic solar and wind energy are the surest way to harm future generations.
The climate change alarm movement is driven by extremist socialists. Ultra-socialist Saikat Chakrabarti, who prepared Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, exposed the underbelly of climate change alarmism when he confessed that “The Green New Deal wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. We think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing”. The CO2 panic is a socialist harangue dressed in a veil of bad science.
Can’t say fairer than that …
Best to everyone, I’ve got to go outside now and get some work done ..
w.
PS. H/T Mona~ctm
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
A good reference that belongs in most anything about Greenland ice is this site that documents daily mass gain/loss.
http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
Yes, the 11 Gtonnes is a lot, but its for only a few days. the rest of the year is pretty unremarkable.
Kinda like a big rainstorm or blizzard – big for the day, not so important for the year.
Nice site Ric! It is interesting that the one interior weather station is at -6.79 C, while the others are above freezing. I think the first half of the ice sheet, around the edges, would melt much more easily than the center, where the average elevation is around 3000 meters. That is high enough to sustain glaciers far south in the Alps. Until we see some more isostatic sinking of the bedrock, the center of Greenland isn’t going to see much melting.
Center of the ice sheet (that station) is IIRC over 2km above sea level. Lapse rate.
The interesting part on that page Ric posted is that one day in November the GAIN in SMB was almost 12GT. So gain almost 12GT one day in November and lose 11GT one day in July. Not a bad trade. So where were all the panicky “we’re DOOMED” articles in November?
The alarmists will obviously counter that the +12GT of SMB was certainly due to “climate change”, just like the -11GT and any other change. If it stayed the same, that would be sure to “climate change” too.
I’d say it was due to a really good snowstorm, something Joe Bastardi and I appreciate. 🙂
I’ve seen 8″ of snow melt in one spring day in New Hampshire. It’s really tough for us to keep snow around once April hits with the high sun, long days, and high dew point air from the Gulf of Mexico.
The late great Christopher Booker did several articles on Greenland ice loss over the years, his main point in them was that there’s a lot of ice there and at the rate of loss that’s happening if none was replaced it would take thousands of years for it all to be gone so nothing to worry about.
James Bull
Well said, Willis. I always enjoy your grains of spot-on wisdom and perspective. The latter element is the most important one. Because it is the best way to handle the hysterical machinations of the environmentalist and political Left.
“So IF the Greenland ice sheet were to lose 103 billion tonnes per year into the indefinite future, it would take about twelve thousand five hundred years to lose half of it …”
Funny to make such a bold prediction when you wont be around…… hehe
Seriously this “IF the rate stays the same” “prediction ” reminds me of this
“And Nasa climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”
Please note that Willis said:
Your comment would be useful had you offered a better comparison.
Leave it to Mosher to not get that the only ‘Bold Prediction’ Willis made was that some troll would come along and try to twist what he was saying in just the way Mosher did.
~¿~
Ric Werme
Mosher doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who really wants to be useful. He behaves more like a jokester who gets off on stirring the pot.
Mosh, I put a disclaimer in there specifically because you made the same nonsensical claim about a previous post of mine. Here’s the disclaimer:
Of course, in your rush to falsely discredit me you ignored that totally.
So your objection is total nonsense. What do I have to do, put “ATTENTION STEVE MOSHER” by the disclaimer so you finally stop trying to twist my words into something I never said?
w.
Who the hell is this guy anyway? Didn’t there used to be someone of the same name who was sympathetic to the sceptical side? He drops in here, does this inane gainsaying bit, then never responds when he’s called out, like any other sociopathic basement-dwelling troll.
What happened? Early-onset dementia? Inquiring minds want to know.
Mosh is not a bad guy, he just has a horrendous drive-by commenting style. Other than that, he’s a reasonable and interesting man.
w.
Hmm, okay. Still, have yet to see him make one non-trollish comment since I became a regular here. Admittedly, not a very long time.
Mosh used to be a very interesting guy. He still is when he deigns to give one of his detailed responses. Unfortunately I think he discovered smart phones and obviously skims the article then gives a rapid, often simgle line response, presumably whilst he’s surfing.
Let’s hope he gets back to his more considered response mode when he is always worth reading
Tonyb
“then gives a
rapidvapid, often simgle line response, presumably whilst he’s surfing.”Fixed it for you Tony.
Michael H Anderson
Mosher is only interested in supporting a subject when he’s on the payroll.
Berkeley pay him, and in addition, awarded him the title of ‘scientist’ despite him only ever having earned a qualification in English (something far from evident in his post’s) so his ego tells him he’s some sort of scientific expert.
He’s just a troll who makes stuff up.
HotScot, that’s not true in the slightest. Mosh and I disagree at times, but he is indeed a scientist and an honest, transparent one. A PhD doesn’t make someone into a scientist. A scientist is someone who practices the scientific method, and Steve absolutely does that. He is also a good and decent man.
My only objection to him is his drive-by style of posting …
w.
I kind of like his “drive-by style of posting”… And I’ve probably learned almost as much from Mosh, as I have from Nick Stokes over the past 8-9 years… 😎
Willis
with the greatest of respect to you, Mosher purports to understand Maths and Physics as though subjects he has studied.
I’m certain that almost any Mathematician and/or Physicist will agree that unless one is trained in the subjects, one can’t simply troll up, do a few calculations then announce oneself as a scientist.
I can do that for Pete’s sake. Indeed, what’s the point of having qualifications at all if we can all just announce ourselves as scientists?
In fact, lets all just call ourselves surgeons or jet pilots, or both.
HotScot August 6, 2019 at 12:31 pm
Let me see if I can explain my position. Science is not a thing. Nor is it a specialty occupation like a surgeon or jet pilot. Science is a process designed to help us understand the world. It’s called the “scientific method”. The scientific method works like this:
Someone makes a claim about how the world works. They provide all of the logic, math, data, computer code, references to past work, and everything else that they think explains and supports their claim.
Then other people try to poke holes in their logic, math, data, computer code and all of the rest. If they can show that the claim is incorrect, it is discarded.
But if nobody can poke holes in the claim, then it is accepted as a PROVISIONAL truth about the world … provisional because at any time, someone might find a way to poke a big gaping hole in the claim.
So what is a scientist? It is someone who follows the scientific method—they make a scientific claim and are totally transparent about their methods, data, etc, and if the claim is falsified, they accept that and move on.
Note that this is very different from being, say, a surgeon. That’s a technical specialty that requires lots of training and practice.
And yes, Mosh, is indeed a scientist, as am I. Now I have no scientific training at all, beyond introductory chemistry and physics. That’s it. No math training beyond calculus. No statistics training of any kind. But training is not what makes a scientist. A scientist is someone who follows the scientific method, which both Mosh and I do.
Let me note also Mosh’s bio, which is impressive:
Finally, I am totally self-educated in math, physics, statistics, and climate science. I am an amateur scientist, a title I wear with pride. The origin of the word “amateur” means lover, and an amateur scientist is someone who does it for love of the scientific chase and the scientific discovery, and not for money.
So no, education or a PhD doesn’t make someone a scientist. Phil Jones PhD refused to reveal his data underlying his temperature reconstruction … sorry, but in that action he’s not a scientist.
Best to you,
w.
Willis
whilst I have the greatest respect for you and your achievements, I know full well how Moshers resume reads. I have also met innumerable people with equally impressive resumes none of whom would even consider calling themselves a scientist. In your case, you always have had the good grace to explicitly state you are a self taught, amateur scientist – which probably, in my opinion, makes you a better scientist than many because you love what you do and you have no delusions of grandeur.
If you don’t like the parallel I drew with Mosher not being entitled to use the title scientist, consider the law.
If you are ever unfortunate to fall foul of the law it is your right, in the civilised west, to nominate someone to represent you. We usually immediately think of a lawyer but the fact is, you can nominate anyone in the world to represent you. They do not require the title ‘Lawyer’ or ‘Solicitor’ or ‘Barrister’.
However, certainly in the UK, I’m sure in the US and almost as certain that in the rest of the civilised west, it is a criminal offence to present oneself as lawyer. I’ll forgo the details of due process, which is probably a very rough equivalent to the scientific process, which anyone can study and even become competent in. The question puzzling me as I think of it is, I wonder if one could legally call oneself an Amateur Lawyer.
Furthermore, there is a dangerous crisis of confidence with science right now as you well know. The peer review process is being hijacked by incompetence, for financial gain and sometimes, downright dishonesty. My 24 year old daughter has worked damn hard, despite a debilitating condition to achieve a Masters qualification and even she acknowledges, and despises, the damage the crisis is causing in science. It compromises her achievements and professional status.
My wife is also Masters qualified and having achieved her first degree through two pregnancies and the early years of childcare you might imagine how hard she worked. She also works in academia so after years of exemplary work, her assembled portfolio of over ten years was assembled, presented and examined, to allow her a part credit for her Masters. As a working woman and head of a department of around 50 academics, many of them with PhD’s themselves, she also worked damn hard to achieve her second degree.
So, considering the peer review crisis and the work both my daughter and my wife put into achieving their scientific qualifications, do you believe it’s either wise, or fair that Steven Mosher is allowed to call himself a scientist just because he follows the scientific process (which I am also familiar with but wouldn’t dare call myself a scientist) but has never demonstrated his abilities with blood, sweat, tears, and a certificate.
I think not. As clever as he may be, he is not a scientist because he has not undertaken the requisite study and gone through the formal process to allow him stand in front of his peers and be awarded a certificate of excellence by a respected academic institution.
By acknowledging Mosher as a scientist you demean every scientist who has ever sweated blood over a final dissertation after years of study. Indeed, you demean your own status as an amateur scientists who has studied a subject you love for almost your whole life.
And whilst Mosher is undoubtedly a charming and affable character in the flesh, so are most salesmen.
I maintain my stance that he is an egotist.
Oh, that’s a shame. I’d thought that you put it there specifically to point out that extending a current trend as a way to estimate the future evolution of ANYTHING in climate is unscientific and baseless.
So let me add that extending a current trend as a way to estimate the future evolution of ANYTHING in climate is unscientific and baseless.
Much of climatology seems to be obsessed with “trends” and extrapolating “trends” as though that tells us something. The “if the current trend continues” is put forward as though that is the logically most likely outcome, rather than something which will almost certainly NOT happen in a complex, chaotic non-linear system.
Anyway thanks for highlighting yet another dataset which is not playing the game. No “run away” melting here either. The max rate of ice loss in 2012 corresponds to the lowest Arctic sea ice area/volume and shows similar improvements since that time.
The only person who correctly showed how to extend a climate trend was Ed Lorenz:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0469(1963)020%3C0130%3Adnf%3E2.0.co%3B2
I think that adding the “even if it goes up by 10X” portion also put it in perspective. And therefore Willis was not just relying on a linear trend based on the current rate. I suppose he could have added an exponential melting of the ice to show that it “could” melt in a week …..
Kindly explain how the use of the word “if“ constitutes a “prediction.”
Whatever…
Michael H Anderson
“If” constitutes a possible scenario without assigning any probability. Mosher is just trying to look smart. Insecure people are the bane of humanity.
but if, might, could, may, and maybe are the cornerstone of climate science
It’s always good to have context. Every summer the sea ice coverage in the arctic decreases a lot relative to the maximum winter coverage.
On the other hand, when you compare the recent annual loss in Greenland’s ice mass to the total, it’s less than a rounding error.
p.s. Willis can have his way too hot ice free landscape.
There is one solid proof which immediately indicates IF there is remarkable ice loss somewhere on this planet. Sealevel rise must accelerate. (This is maybe the only physical proof of this warming nonsense.) Everything else is twisted minds daydreams.
Steve, I appreciate your willingness to engage here, and to offer alternative thoughts. However, your comments tend to be the mysterious, vague kind that often sound angry or arrogant. You really should take a lesson from Willis – he writes interesting things on difficult subjects that engage both the experts and the people like me that are just trying to follow along. His style is engaging and coherent. If you would write in the same fashion, you might win over some people like me who are trying to learn this stuff. You did that a little when you were commenting about bitcoin mining, and I found it informative and interesting.
Steven doesn’t read for understanding, he just skims until he can find something to complain about.
Mosh said,**Seriously this “IF the rate stays the same” “prediction ” reminds me of this**
And the rate is NOT staying the same. The melt is decreasing so it will take centuries LONGER that Willis noted. So this is MUCH better than the fear monger Zwally said.
Is this the same Mr. Mosher that says you can average intensive properties, because you can average colors–whatever that means?
Jim
Mosh….I think you’re starting to get it….there is still hope for you returning from the dark side.
You will know you’re all the way back when Michael Mann tells you….
“Mosh…….I am you father”
In 12,000 years we will be into the next ice age and everybody will be cursing the greens.
But on the bright side, or should I say white side, the Greenland icecap will be growing and the Arctic will no longer be ice free.
Mosher writes
IF Willis had meant it as a prediction then you’d be right, but he didn’t. It was a way of putting the “large” ice losses into context….but Zwally wasn’t using the rate as a comparison, he was using it as a prediction. So when you say “reminds me of” then you’ve twisted Willis’ statement out of its useful context.
You would think that an English major would know the difference between “if” and “at this rate”.
The video of Greenland ice sheet melting they showed on PBS Newshour last night showed surfaces that were completely covered in dark ‘dust’. So how much of the melting is cyroconite melting and not temperature-induced melting? And what is the source of the ‘dust’ – how much of it is man-made pollution, is some of it Saharan dust?
A lot is soot from wild fires and from China’s particulate pollution.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/03/another-alarmist-pillar-collapses-greenland-melting-due-to-old-soot-feedback-loops-and-albedo-change-not-agw/
It would be tough for Saharan dust to make it that far north.
In 2012, as revealed by satellite photos, a great deal of Saharan dust did deposit on Greenland. Normally that dust ends up mostly around the Amazon River.
“Normally…”? How ’bout it’s normal when in a particular collection of world-wide weather pattern(s)? Since we only have ~40 years of satellites, and I don’t know when they started taking pictures of dust layers on Greenland ice, we don’t really know what’s “Normal…” The ice cores can probably shed some light on that, but I don’t know that they have been studied for this kind of data. I think it might be safe to say, “…most of the time…” Saharan dust can’t make it that far north. But then again, maybe that condition is prevalent, and the stretch of recent time that found no Sahara dust overlaying the Greenland ice was the anomaly? Data! We need more data!
“It would be tough for Saharan dust to make it that far north”
Not now we are into the meridional stage of the 60-Year climate cycle.
From EuMetSat
Two dust clouds, one from northern Africa and one from Central Europe, travelled north towards Iceland and Greenland in late April 2019.
https://www.eumetsat.int/website/home/Images/ImageLibrary/DAT_4384629.html?lang=EN
More great research, W.
Anyone else surprised by the hyperbole and anti-intellectualism in the latest Greenland horror movie?
I think another good comparison to show if 11 billion tons, or 103 billion tons is a lot is to show how much sea level rise that translates to.
There’s plenty of archaeological evidence that in the distant past, Greenland was bare of ice, had trees – a forest, in fact – and wasn’t one bit harmed by that.
But that was before the Real World was no longer important. Panic attacks and lurid headlines are much more important.
Hey, it’s in the upper 50s to low 60s at night now. Good sleeping weather. Have a nice August!!!
This is true for SOME of Greenland, like the southern coast. Much of it has been one giant ice field for much, much longer. Like a Million years longer.
And Needless to say, it won’t be melting again anytime soon.
~¿~
More like 2.5 million years since the last time most of Greenland was ice-free and forested. It is uncertain how long since it was completely ice-free, but not less than 30 million years.
https://notendur.hi.is/oi/AG-326%202006%20readings/Greenland/Funder_BGSD2001.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232790227_Continental_ice_in_Greenland_during_the_Eocene_and_Oligocene
An article here, quite possibly written by Willis, said that ice cores and ground penetrating radar show that about 1/2 of the Greenland ice had been formed in the past 3500 years.
Indeed it has, but as ice moves away and melts or calves into the ocean it is replaced by new ice. Remember that the definition of a glacier is that the ice moves. Really old ice is only found right under the ice-divide, and even there, there is little or none older than 150,000 years.
http://cdn.antarcticglaciers.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ICE_SHEET_DYNAMICS.gif
Thank you Willis. I was hoping someone would work the numbers in a meaningful way. I watched some drivel on the news last night and was just glad they didn’t measure it in “Olympic Swimming Pools”.
If I did my math correct, 510 billion metric tons of ice melting into the ocean will produce 1mm of sea level rise.
Sanjeev Sabhlok seems like a sensible person.
No more nuclear please. Gas is good. More CO2 is better. It our dung in the air. Everything we and drink except pure water depends on it.
HenryP,
I spent a number of career years working with and getting to understand the need clear fuel cycle.
As a result, I could write most encouraging words for it’s safe future.
You pop up here with “No more nuclear please”, with no evidence of experience or scholarship or logic.
You are, of course, free to do so, but can I suggest that you do exhibit experience, scholarship and logic before you post? Geoff S
I’m confused. Has the average loss been 103 billion tons per year or over a period of 30 years . Why would you use 103 billion tons per year to calculate the number of years to loose half the ice if the actual period was 30 years?
It’s 103 billion tonnes per year. Sorry for the confusion.
w.
It is the average annual loss for the 30 year period. It is reasonably clear if you read carefully. It comports with eyeometry of the graph.
Actually, it WASN’T clear.
At first, I also thought he meant 103 billion tonnes for the whole 30 years, too. It only became clear later in the article that it was 103 tonnes a year average.
~¿~
OK, I sifted through all the billions and billions, and here is what I came up with.
Ice loss is stated as 5,000 billion tons.
Total ice cap as 2,600,000 billion tons.
Drop the “billion tons” and divide by 1000, we get 5 and 2,600.
Calculate the ration and convert to %.
Total accumulated ice loss = 0.19%, call it 0.2%.
OK, I can understand calculating an estimate of the total ice volume based on the area of Greenland and estimated ice thickness. I can also go along with an estimate of ice melt by watching summer melt river flows. The trouble is in combining the estimates year on year to come up with estimates like this.
Are we really able to measure ice mass of the entire island to +/- 0.1%, year on year?
{Please, nobody say the GRACE mission. If you do, I will burst out laughing with coffee all over my keyboard and monitor, then I will choke and go into convulsions of hysterical laughter, then I will fall over, and need help getting up. Nobody here wants all that.}
4 MSp less by today (Sp = swimming pool) 🙂
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7316653/Water-gushes-Greenland-bridge-12-BILLION-tons-ice-lost-ONE-DAY.html
Not only that, one has to consider the natural variation in these numbers over all time scales to determine if something exceptional is happening. All the available evidence points to “no” as the answer to that question.
But no one ever got funded to research a disaster that isn’t happening and not likely to happen, right?
Well, not if they admitted it. There are plenty plenty of the others who did.
I’ve said it many times here but I’m going to say it again – if Willis didn’t exist we would have to invent him. Terrific article – thank you!
A very useful article. However, it’s all very well enlightening us skeptics but as the NYT article today suggests, increasing numbers in the GOP have swallowed the kool-aid and they are the ones needing to have their eyes opened.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/climate/climate-change-republicans.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190803?campaign_id=2&instance_id=11317&segment_id=15843&user_id=82537d7630b630dcb71453513c4b37a6®i_id=697034920803
NYt article -ignore or have some salt with your Margarita..
“increasing numbers in the GOP have swallowed the kool-aid”
This is a problem because they don’t want to be referred to by an ugly epithet. The alarmists use ‘denier’ for a reason as it infers with prejudice that undeniable science is being ignored. Once the scientific truth can gain critical mass, this fear will go away and there will be an avalanche of acceptance and changed minds, even among the political left, as they’ll not want to be referred to by the d-word either.
I woud not believe anything at all that comes from the New York Times.
Greenland has had two unusual melt episodes in the last couple of months
Oddly enough DMI who actually operates the weather stations on the icecap didn’t notice more than one:
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/meltarea/MELTA_combine_SM_DK_20190802.png
But on the other hand there was three in 2018 when the mass balance was actually positive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180831033538/https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
A headline from Feb 2019-
“Lost WWII Plane Found Buried Under 340 Feet Of Ice…In Greenland”
This has been covered before with previous planes that had been found upright meaning the planes has not sunk into the ice but been covered with snow over the years.
340 ft of ice since 1942, this is a shed load of ice that has covered the plane, how many tons of snow has fallen since 1942?
There’s a lot more involved than just snowing and melting. Ice sheets move, and things sink.
“and things sink’
The thinking is if it had sunk the plane would have been sitting nose down from the weight of the engines. The plane was sitting perfectly level.
Airplanes are balanced with the center of gravity generally near the center of the wing. Why do you think planes that ditch and sink are often flat on the ocean bottom? If the engines fall off on impact, then the tail will sink first. Planes sometimes are balanced with the CG off center but not much.
“Airplanes are balanced with the center of gravity generally near the center of the wing. ”
Such an aircraft would be extremely dangerous. To be statically stable the center of gravity must be in front of the center of lift, which under normal conditions (subsonic flight, reasonable angle of attack) is usually at about quarter chord, i e about 25% of the way from the leading to the trailing edge.
Technically the plane didn’t sink. The ice that the plane was encased in migrated downwards as the ice underneath flowed out into the glacier and more ice accumulated on top of it.
Things rarely if ever sink into glaciers in the accumulation zone (unless they fall into a crevasse). In the ablation zone they can do if they are dark and heat up enough in summer to melt the ice underneath.
Notice how medial moraines remain at the surface for miles downglacier from their origin though the rocks are both much darker and much denser than ice:
Much of those 340 feet is actually compacted snow (firn), the snow usually turns to ice at a depth of c. 300 feet where the pressure is enough to squeeze the firn into ice.
It makes little sense to talk about Greenland ice loss/gain without reference to the AMO cycle. Also, the data is pretty clear that Greenland has gained substantial ice over the last 5000 years.
Nice crisp post, Willis.
A further reference point for sea level rise (slr) fans.
1Gt of melted ice will cause a SLR of ~2.78 microns (calcs and refs in essay PseudoPrecision in ebook Blowing Smoke). So the ~103 Gt/year average net loss is ~290microns, OR 0.29mm/year. Very scary—not!
This site is also very good, especially as it shows massive increases in Ice over the 2017/2018 period
https://web.archive.org/web/20180831033538/https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
https://web.archive.org/web/20180831033538/https://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
in fact around an extra 250billion tons in 3 years, so lets project that trend in to the future instead.
If it’s information from the Australian media just ignore it you know they are liars. Australia doesn’t have a news service they have an opinion service.
Same here in New Zealand, where TVNZ and the print media are a disgrace. However, I do detect the slow spread of the skeptic viewpoint – in most gatherings I am no longer the sole believer in Trump and non-CAGW – so the overwhelming warmist / alarmist view seems to be weakening. Perhaps the MSM have not achieved their aims as much as we had feared.
opinions or gossip or propaganda?
Seems more like ‘C’ to me.
I have been visiting WUWT for many years, but this is certainly one of the best articles I have seen here. Very convincing, especially the last Figure. A picture paints a thousand words …
Eleven billion tons of ice equates to enough ice cubes for making eleventy kabillion Manhattans. That’s a lot of Manhattans!
But, what if you’re drinking your Manhattan in an Olympic-sized swimming pool, IN Manhattan, while watching a documentary on the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima?? Answer me that Mr. Smarty Pants!!
so the fact that Greenland has a wildfire burning for the first time in recorded history is, what, false, or irrelevant, or what?
back to swimming lessons …
False and irrelevant. It had fires in 2017 and 2018. And I find this:
And this …
Finally, the globe has been warming for a couple centuries or more … do you expect things to stay the same? Your problem seems to be that you ascribe the centuries of warming to humans.
w.
Thanks for the perspective Willis.
I was watching the Weather Channel wetting their panties over this melt and wondering;
What does a melt like this do to the ice core?
Do melts wipe out the compressed snow/ice layers from decades or even centuries prior to the melt?
And how would the ice core record this melt?
How can the “ice researchers” know if such melts have occurred?
What shows in the ice?
It melts every summer. That is partly how Greenland ice cores are dated. By melt ‘tree rings’.
No, near the edge (about up to 5,000-7,000 feet altitude) there is melt every summer. Near the ice divide at the center of the icecap (where ice-cores are drilled) there is only about one melting episode per century (they were more frequent during the Eemian interglacial). The two latest were in 1888 and 2012.
Such melt episodes form thin clear ice layers in the snow which are easily distinguishable from the bubbly ice formed by compression of snow. In really deep ice it is not possible to distinguish them with the bare eye since the gas in the bubbles form clathrates.
To answer the question of “is 10 billion tonnes really a big number?”
In the water industry nobody talks in litres, or tonnes of water, except for sensationalist headlines. The correct unit of measurement is Megalitres per day or cumecs (cubic metres per second).
10 billion tonnes of water per day is equal to 10million megalitres per day.
Or 115000 cumecs.
To put that into perspective, the average flow rate for the amazon river is almost twice that at 209000 cumecs. Compared to a peak flow rate for Greenland of 115000 cumecs.
Nobody would suggest the Amazon is raising sea levels, so why would somebody say Greenland is raising sea levels, with comparable flow rates, just because the precipitation falls in winter and flows off in summer?
The reason the Amazon river doesn’t raise sea levels is because all that water is returned to the Amazon forest through evaporation and rain, so the net change is 0.
Note that your number for Greenland is a net change of 115 000 cumecs. The actual flow of meltwater is higher, but the rest is replaced with new snow/ice during winter. So 115 000 cumecs is what’s melting that isn’t being replaced.
Hi Stefan,
As I understand it, 115 000 cumecs is the flow rate of ice melt occurring from the melt of 10 billion tonnes of ice lost in a day. On one particular warm summers day in Greenland.
I think you must be mistaken, if you believe the melted ice won’t be replaced in the winter.
Actually yes, you are mistaken.
I was not referring to the 103 billion tonnes of ice lost in 29 years.
I was referring to the 11 billion tonnes lost in one day. Apologies, I did the math on 10 billion instead of 11 billion, I don’t know where I got 10billion from. Anyway, doesn’t change much.
The net loss of 103 billion over 29 years I calculated quickly as 113 cumecs. It’s not a particularly big number. But evidently results in a gradual sea level rise over that 29 year period regardless.
Hi Stephen – please, in the global sense of these flows affecting sea levels, shouldn’t we consider Sverdrups rather than cumecs?
cheers edi
Greenland has about 1.8 million square kilometer. This is 1.8e12 square meter. The specific weight of ice is 0.9. This means with the 11 billion tons is 11e12kg, that’s 5.5 kg per m2 which is 5mm los ion one warm day. This is not much, I think.
Wrong calculation take the next comment