Even if the climate cools, study finds, glaciers will continue to shrink
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Nearly 40 years of satellite data from Greenland shows that glaciers on the island have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop today, the ice sheet would continue shrinking.
The finding, published today, Aug. 13, in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment, means that Greenland’s glaciers have passed a tipping point of sorts, where the snowfall that replenishes the ice sheet each year cannot keep up with the ice that is flowing into the ocean from glaciers.
“We’ve been looking at these remote sensing observations to study how ice discharge and accumulation have varied,” said Michalea King, lead author of the study and a researcher at The Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. “And what we’ve found is that the ice that’s discharging into the ocean is far surpassing the snow that’s accumulating on the surface of the ice sheet.”
King and other researchers analyzed monthly satellite data from more than 200 large glaciers draining into the ocean around Greenland. Their observations show how much ice breaks off into icebergs or melts from the glaciers into the ocean. They also show the amount of snowfall each year–the way these glaciers get replenished.
The researchers found that, throughout the 1980s and 90s, snow gained through accumulation and ice melted or calved from glaciers were mostly in balance, keeping the ice sheet intact. Through those decades, the researchers found, the ice sheets generally lost about 450 gigatons (about 450 billion tons) of ice each year from flowing outlet glaciers, which was replaced with snowfall.
“We are measuring the pulse of the ice sheet–how much ice glaciers drain at the edges of the ice sheet–which increases in the summer. And what we see is that it was relatively steady until a big increase in ice discharging to the ocean during a short five- to six-year period,” King said.
The researchers’ analysis found that the baseline of that pulse–the amount of ice being lost each year–started increasing steadily around 2000, so that the glaciers were losing about 500 gigatons each year. Snowfall did not increase at the same time, and over the last decade, the rate of ice loss from glaciers has stayed about the same–meaning the ice sheet has been losing ice more rapidly than it’s being replenished.
“Glaciers have been sensitive to seasonal melt for as long as we’ve been able to observe it, with spikes in ice discharge in the summer,” she said. “But starting in 2000, you start superimposing that seasonal melt on a higher baseline–so you’re going to get even more losses.”
Before 2000, the ice sheet would have about the same chance to gain or lose mass each year. In the current climate, the ice sheet will gain mass in only one out of every 100 years.
King said that large glaciers across Greenland have retreated about 3 kilometers on average since 1985–“that’s a lot of distance,” she said. The glaciers have shrunk back enough that many of them are sitting in deeper water, meaning more ice is in contact with water. Warm ocean water melts glacier ice, and also makes it difficult for the glaciers to grow back to their previous positions.
That means that even if humans were somehow miraculously able to stop climate change in its tracks, ice lost from glaciers draining ice to the ocean would likely still exceed ice gained from snow accumulation, and the ice sheet would continue to shrink for some time.
“Glacier retreat has knocked the dynamics of the whole ice sheet into a constant state of loss,” said Ian Howat, a co-author on the paper, professor of earth sciences and distinguished university scholar at Ohio State. “Even if the climate were to stay the same or even get a little colder, the ice sheet would still be losing mass.”
Shrinking glaciers in Greenland are a problem for the entire planet. The ice that melts or breaks off from Greenland’s ice sheets ends up in the Atlantic Ocean–and, eventually, all of the world’s oceans. Ice from Greenland is a leading contributor to sea level rise–last year, enough ice melted or broke off from the Greenland ice sheet to cause the oceans to rise by 2.2 millimeters in just two months.
The new findings are bleak, but King said there are silver linings.
“It’s always a positive thing to learn more about glacier environments, because we can only improve our predictions for how rapidly things will change in the future,” she said. “And that can only help us with adaptation and mitigation strategies. The more we know, the better we can prepare.”
###
This work was supported by grants from NASA. Other Ohio State researchers who worked on this study are Salvatore Candela, Myoung Noh and Adelaide Negrete.
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Wow it might et to be as warm as in the days of the Vikings when it was called Greenland for a reason.
Amen to that, Justin.
The current warmists have never considered history when declaring the end of the world is nigh wne Greenland is green again.
As long as the global temp is above a certain temperature, glaciers will continue to melt, it’s just the result of NOT being in a glacial period. Currently, the global temp simply determines how fast they melt or grow, with a general trend, probably toward melting. The Little Ice Age saw a large reversal, but it was a temporary situation.
Their assumption or baseless speculation that melting will likely out pace snow accumulation in Greenland is truly wishful thinking. Greenland and Antarctica are doing just fine and not about to collapse.
I love their idea of passing a point of no return. Really? Just like the fabled “tipping points,” they have no clue as we have been way warmer than now in the not too distant past and we did not tip then. So????
Glaciers aren’t as big as they were during the height of the Little Ice Age, therefore we’re all doomed.
Or something like that.
Hey they’ve shrunk THREE kilometers. That’s a LOT. They will probably be gone by next Tuesday!
Gigatons, smigatons! How much is that in percent? How long before Greenland is ice free, at that rate? A million years? Only 100,000 years? Or, gasp, only 10,000 years?
They say, “… have passed a tipping point of sorts …” That is like saying “has experienced a death of sorts.” Have the glaciers passed a point of no return, or not? I’d put my money on “not.”
Of course they haven’t. There is no such thing as a “glacier tipping point”. Even a glacier that has melted away completely will re-form as soon as the climate is cold enough.
Nearly all glaciers in the world except on Antarctica and Greenland were gone 10,000 years ago during the Holocene optimum.
Konrad Steffen passed the point of no return on Greenland.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/climate/konrad-steffen-dead.html
That’s sad news
https://klimaathype.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/over-groenland/
I don’t think the financial and political backers want to hear about “point-of-no-return.” That means the GND is useless. I guess these guys didn’t get the message. Always want something like, “ we have only X years…”
BTW: what sort of resources might lie under the Greenland ice? No wonder all the great powers want it.
“… have passed a tipping point of sorts …” is basically saying that it is NOT a “tipping point” ie a process now dominated by a postive feedback. So now that we have established that it is NOT actually a tipping point, what is it ?
So what is an “intact” ice sheet, one which never changes ? This is once again the delusion of all is well in God’s universe and nothing will change.
This is basically an expression of the fear of death which western culture generally shuns and is structured to avoid.
The world only changes on millennial time-scales and so we have nothing to fear. Anything which is found to change in the last 50 years is thus a product of anthropologic malfeasance.
Greenland is a giant bucket. Pretending that such a bucket has “tipped” over because of peripheral changes is dishonest beyond even what is permitted in “Nature climate change *.*” journals.
This is HORSE CHITTE SCIENCE.
Even small bits of an ice free Greenland would be worth a fortune as an advanced missile placement. No wonder Donald wants to buy it.
Danes are no fools, they are waiting for the real estate value to rise before selling !
The US and China are jockeying for control of Greenland. The Chinese wanted to build airbases…er…airports there last year, but the US nipped that in the bud. China’s pushing for an independent Greenland so that it can dominate the new country and realize it’s dream of a “polar Silk Road.” China wants to dominate the world.
So, Trump’s attempt to buy Greenland, which Denmark cannot defend, is the logical response to Chinese encroachments.
The Modern Warming Period is a temporary, cyclic reversal in the secular trend. The LIA was a pro-trend cycle for the past 3000 to 5200 years. Unfortunately, we’re headed down into the next glaciation, unless nuclear-powered blow driers melt the nascent ice sheets.
Keep in mind that glaciers are essentially rivers of frozen water. And like any river, a high output at the mouth indicates that a large amount of precipitation has fallen upstream. So under stable temperature conditions, a high rate of glacial calving simply indicates a high amount of snowfall upstream. The glaciers advance, calve, and retreat. After another pulse of precipitation, they advance, calve, and retreat again.
Alarmist only have a sense of the now. Forget the past. It is only the present that “might be, could be, possibly”(?), cascading towards a doomed tomorrow.
So give us all your money today and do as we say.
Another new study. Maybe they should read some of the old studies first.
If at least they were at the now
The melting season this year was a very short one,
5 days in a row 14 gigtons of snow accumulated in Greenland.
If the oceans actually do warm, then the amount of snow falling on Greenland would increase.
Take a quick look here:
http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
And here:
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/surface/SMB_curves_LA_DK_20200814.png
Jakobshavn, the world’s fastest moving glacier had been shrinking for decades. Surprise, it’s reversed is thickening and advancing again, starting in 2017. This article is just part of the pile up of papers supporting the end of the world in 2030.
Even the best scientists, bless their hearts, are actually naive about how fast technology can react to a supposed crisis requiring massive project development. They think these scare stories and 10yr deadlines are going to mobilize us to do herculean things. The Panama canal, the Manhattan project, and wartime production in WWII are puny compared to the GND project.
It takes 7 to 10 years to develop, construct and put into production a $1 billion new lithium mine that would produce a mere 35,000t a year of battery chemical, enough for 1.5 million cars. We would need 60 such projects to already be in the pipeline to replace the annual output of fossil fuel cars by 2030. We would need to double this to provide battery storage for a reliable grid of renewables to ensure electric transportation, haulage of commodities, grain/foods, industrial machinery, etc.
Most of those deposits have yet to be found! I’m optimistic about the availability of resources and ingenuity of exploration geologists, but a realistic deadline for a paradigm change envisioned would be a century to complete.
A restored Greenland to being green should be part of the Green New Deal! :-}
Just think about the increased area for forests to “mop up” more CO2… The greens should be happy about this…
No. At that time you could go barley on southernmost Greenland, that is not possible now. And many norse ruins are under the sea, because the ice has grown and presses the land down.
It was called Greenland as part of an advertising ploy to attract settlers… even hundreds of years ago the blurb did not match the reality
You might be interested to know that the norse settlers found southern Greenland abandoned by the Paleo-Eskimos (which weren’t Eskimos by the way). though they did find ruins and stone tools.
The Paleo-Eskimos did not have kayaks, and were dependent on hunting seals on the sea-ice. So southern Greenland had simply become to warm to be inhabitable for them during the MWP.
At the same time the MWP was fatal for the Paleo-Eskimos, because the Thule Culture in Alaska (=ancestral inuits), did have kayaks and umiaqs and lived largely by hunting bowhead whales from umiaqs. The MWP opened up the straits in the Parry Archipelago for the whales and in just a century or two the Thule Culture had spread all the way to Greenland, displacing the Paleo-Eskimos who were extinct by about 1500.
And they named Iceland to attract the cocktail set … \sarc …
They named Greenland , Greenland to attract all the greenies who were attempting to ruin society at that time. The hope was that they would all flock there to fulfill their “green” utopia and then die off leaving the rest of society to get on with life.
We should now rename Antactica “New Greenland” and offer them all free passage ( one way only ).
You are the proof of a useful Idiot griff .
We have no need to look further .
You and your ilk are the climate change deniers .
It was warm enough to grow barley and brew beer in Greenland in the MWP .
That is a fact and history does not lie .
Grifter, I have no doubt that you are correct and that you have documentary evidence of the paleo-greenwash to which you refer.
Could you please post archeological evidence of this historic con-job so that I can help you in spreading the word.
This sort of lying commercialism and deceit must be called out at every turn, lest we repeat the same errors today.
I count on you. Please don’t let me down !!
It is actually true. At least it is told that way in Islendingabók by Are Torgilsson, c. 1130 AD, the oldest narrative histoy in Icelandic (or any of the Northern languages). That was less than 150 years later, and information in icelandic sources about that period is generally correct when they can be cross-checked by contemporary sources.
“Thorvald Asvaldsson was banished from Norway for manslaughter and went into exile in Iceland accompanied by young Erik. When Erik was banished from Iceland, he travelled further west to an area he named Greenland, where he established the first permanent settlement in 986.”
Eric (The Red) wasn’t allowed back to Norway or Iceland, so he did a clever marketing campaign to name the new island he discovered ‘Greenland’ to attract more settlers with stories of a green paradise. Probably was, but not like Iceland which had all the geothermal hot water to bath in and a fair bit of arable land. Obviously as everyone knows, Greenland was much warmer in the Medieval Warm Period for about 400 years, as evidenced both by early writings and archaeology evidence, including climate evidence. But Greenland was was still an Ice Sheet, and the winters would have been miserable. Spring and summer would have been much more bearable if they were growing barley, which also indicates a much warmer climate than now, where they are lucky to get up a good hay crop now in the southern part of the island.
Stop displaying your IGNORANCE as a Climate Change Denier, griff.
Since Griffs’ name is Ed , I suggest we be polite and address him as “Mr Ed”
😉
😉
No, Mr Ed, the horse was actually quite intelligent
Griff…. no sign of intelligent life.
… more like an “AI”, but missing the “I” part.
Is there no trope so tired, that the griffster won’t trot it out.
The fact that the Vikings farmed Greenland is well documented. The fact that they had to abandon these farms when the climate got colder is well documented. The fact that the remains of their farms are still buried in the ice and permafrost is well documented.
Greenland is still colder than it was when it was being farmed by the Vikings.
That’s a fact, please learn to live with it.
Griff,
So is why they call it “The Green New Deal”?
Sounds good to the gullible but is divorced from reality?
The reality being a ploy to promote a political ideology?
(Kind of like Pelosi and Schumer have exploited the “WaHOO! Virus” to pass their wish list.)
As usual, Griff the coward drops a turd then runs away.
Griff exceeds expectations, as usual. For idiocy.
Tell whatever lies help you sleep at night, reality is going to bang you in the a$$ even after you die, liespewing,,,,,,,,well, you have repeatedly told us what you are.
Look at a map.
Southern Greenland is quite a long way further south than Iceland. About the same latitude as Anchorage Alaska.
Both Iceland and Anchorage have always been habitable.
The reason it was called ‘Greenland’ was to make it easier to convince Scandinavian settlers to go there. It was icier then than it is now.
Kurt, how were the new settlers to live in a frozen wasteland. Use your head. They grew barley and raised livestock, something you cannot do there now!!
Grapes, too.
So they grew crops on ice? Wow, just wow.
As of last year, the height of Jakobshavn glacier in western Greenland had increased by as much as 30 meters (98 feet) per year for three consecutive years in some areas. Not sure if that is continuing, but that alone should negate this study.
That was my first thought. “Is this another study that only looks at the area under ice rather than the thickness and total volume of ice?”
Greenland is an ice bucket. What they are measuring is the frost around the rim.
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Greenland glaciology knows this “kinda tipping point ” narrative to be complete BS.
The claim that “last year, enough ice melted or broke off from the Greenland ice sheet to cause the oceans to rise by 2.2 millimeters in just two months.” is totally fraudulent. Greenland loses a lot of ice every summer, and puts most of it back on in winter.
Meanwhile, the switch around 2000 was AMO related. As the BBC told us in 2003, Greenland had cooled significantly in the previous 40 yrs:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2840137.stm
This can clearly be seen in Greenland’s temperature record, which shows temperatures are no higher now than in the 1930s:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/02/16/greenland-temperature-update/
Finally glacier fronts stopped retreating in 2012:
Thanks for posting. Good Job.
Like you, Paul, I stubbornly look at the measurement data, finding it more authoritative than the models and predictions and instagram postings. Unfortunately in these days where people don’t read the old books (because they are too busy “liking” and posting opinions) measurements seem so … static. Measurements just sit on your screen and stare at you, and don’r care how many ‘likes’ they get.
Which is precisely why the internet is so much more important than books; models more important than data. One tells the truth; one generates income.
How dare you look at all the data. Don’t you know that a true climate scientist only looks at the data that supports the theory he is paid to prove?
A glacier is a RIVER of ice,
The real problems occur when they stop flowing !
Paul,
You beat me to it.
What brand of shoddy science uses vague words like “enough ice … to cause the oceans to rise by 2.2 mm in just 2 months”?
The direct, proper question is “Did the oceans rise by a measured 2.2 mm in 2months, or did they not?” The answer is that they did not.
They did not rise by this amount because at similar times, ocean waters were evaporating and some of this fell as snow on Greenland, resulting in a near zero net balance of sea levels.
It would take many thousands of years to melt all Greenland ice under current scenarios. It is not beyond the wit of inventive Man (excluding Democrat little brown girls) to live with.
Besides, chances are high that cooler times will happen in those thousands of years.
I cannot comprehend the mindsets of authors who are devious with their imagined catastrophes, as if they feel compelled to make others feel bad to get their jollies (and research grant $$$).
Can someone explain how glaciers that are “retreating” can rest in “deeper (ocean) water”?
I was also wondering that, but concluded that it was like trying to interpret the babbling of a newborn infant.
Paul – The whole point of the study was to measure exactly that: Is it putting the ice back on? Findings: No. Not anymore. Not since about 1990. Here is a link to the study itself, rather than public-consumption summaries:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-0001-2
The data are fairly clear in their trends.
Even in the 17-year-old BBC article you link, we find this:
“Globally, temperatures have risen over this period (+0.53 C) and in Greenland itself scientists have recently reported fairly dramatic thinning of the island’s ice sheet.
But Dr Edward Hanna, from the Institute of Marine Studies at the University of Plymouth, UK, said that, as with all climate science, a fuller picture emerges when long-term data are taken into account.”
And this:
“Nasa found the ice had lost up to five metres in thickness over a five-year period. Other, more recent studies have continued to document a rapid thaw.”
And yet it is still covered with ice and more builds up every winter, then spring comes and some melts, summer arrives and it still is there, then fall begins and more freezes, winter again and more ice. So on and so forth, just as it has done for millennia and will continue to do into the vast and unknowable future no matter what you alarmunistas screech&bleat ad nauseam.
We all need to refocus our lives and make the preservation of ice our first priority.
Nothing else is more important. Planet earth cannot take care of itself.
That’s a bit like saying “We all need to refocus our lives and make [‘stopping the rising tide’ or ‘preventing the evolution of species’ or ‘stopping the solar cycles’] our first priority. Nothing else is more important.” Ice has been coming and going for time immemorial (literally immemorial) and humans have had to adjust.
Oops, Billy, maybe I missed the /sarc/ tag. 😉
Thanks for attempting a wider view point boff’ but I have been drinking warm scotch all evening and I can assure you that the preservation of ice should be our first priority.
Tipping points are no problem, as long as what is being tipped is suitably cooled by ice.
Ice in your scotch?
Savagery
I vow only to use ice in my gin and tonics, with a twist of lime for the greenies.
Greg ice kills the taste of a whisky. Somewhere in Scotland a team lovingly malted specially selected barley, used water from a specific source, used peat from the locality to dry the barley, copper pot stills, stored the spirit in oak barrels previously used for Sherry or Bourbon for a minimum of three years, letting the angels take their share. So that at the end there are dozens of compounds contributing to a unique aroma and flavour for each whisky be it single malt, Single Grain, Blended Malt, orjust blended. All it needs is a dash of water, preferably Scottish water from a mountain stream. Putting ice in stops those compinds doing heir job.
I say this as someone who doesn’t drink spirits but appreciates the efforts of craftsmen in any field.
Sorry about that. Thought it was obvious.
What exactly is a “a tipping point of sorts”? A scarecrow?
It’s a tipping point that has somewhat plausible deniability when it doesn’t tip.
Which, of course, brings up the question of what is “somewhat plausible deniability”? I don’t know, but you can probably get a degree in it from most “major” universities today.
12000 years ago when the glaciers began melting away was the “tipping point of sorts”
Tippings points are anything in Climate Science(tm) that can make a scary story. There is no actual scientific basis they exist but in Climate Science ™ you do not have to prove anything you just assume the worst case to be true.
Sort of like the dark matter of climate science?
Here in the UK, “sort” is slang for a lady of negotiable affection. When too many appear on the same street corner, they start tipping each other over.
Well, a tip is where you dump your garbage.
So a tipping point would be where you stand to launch your garbage.
Universities have a lot of tipping points these days.
Tipping point. Isn’t that a place with a lot of cows?
The point beyond which nothing can stop the process from racing forward until it fully processes. e.g. the point beyond which all of the Greenland ice will melt no matter what we do. The study being discussed here shows fairly conclusively that that tipping point has been passed.
Good, so we can stop pissing away money or listening to alarmunistas like you. Nothing can stop climate from changing, humans are not causing it and can do nothing about it.
Henceforth
when all the glaciers have shrunk we shall call this country “Whiteland”
in recollection of what an inhospitable frozen place it was during our times
just as England was in past times (and to confuse those in generations to come)
we shall call this country “Whiteland” Not likely in these cancel culture times
With Dems coming to power in the US it may end up being renamed “Sorosland”.
What a piece of garbage study. If we premise their data thusly, the entire problem goes away: Increased calving is due to increased deposition, which pushes more ice into the tongues of glaciers. Ergo, the sea level is falling.
Actually, I don’t think the problem here is either rising or falling of sea levels. The real problem is, we don’t have enough history of glacial calving on the island of Greenland to yet understand the ice sheet via this method. I’m not convinced that this particular method will ever be helpful in a Holocene resistant ice sheet. But I do know as well as I know anything (a hell of a caveat, eh?) that we don’t understand Greenland well enough to declare “tipping points” based on a few years of data and a new novel hypothesis.
Agreed with your calving / deposition point. My guess is they assume a steady rate of calving even with a decreased rate of deposition. The reality is much more likely to be a sharp decrease in calving as the mass of the ice sheet decreases. In other words, seems reasonable to conclude that once the ice sheet mass reaches some lower limit, the calving will cease. And then ice sheet loss will be slowed (as it will simply be the melt rate).
rip
Have some people in academia forgotten that Greenland is a country with working farms and fisheries, settled by Inuits and Danish immigrants . The retreat of the glaciers will expose more land for livestock farming which is the major farming activity. Like the Norse farmers before them they probably find the more continental type climate up-fjord , with warm summers and long days, more conducive to the growth of hay meadows than the cold, damp climate of the coast. The establishment of shielings , upland summer pastures and huts close to the glaciers, has long been a significant subject of study for present day archaeologists.
Serious question…
If there was a 2.2 mm rise over 2 months in global sea level last year…wouldn’t we see it in the sea level measurements around the world?
Serious answer:
No we never rely on actual real world measurements and if we can’t find it it is always wherever we don’t have data from. It’s best just to model it assuming it’s there and then everybody is happy.
Well, no, because it was winter in Antarctica and the glaciers there were growing. And vice versa
There is always significant seasonal variation in sea level. IF there was 2.2 mm, it was probably almost all part of the normal seasonal fluctuation. The question they should answer is how much more than normal was the melt.
We know for sure that during 16 years (of this millenium) greenland and antarctica alltogether added only ridiculously low 14 mm sea level raise.
That said…
It’s so obvious that cherrypicking two “melting/calving” months last year is just a simple trick to secure more funding. I feel sorry for these people.
We can just hope that some warming postpones the REAL problem, the one Milankovic revealed.
Well, yes.
The Groenland ice has a hysteresis.
It was created during the ice age and could survive the warmer interglacial, because it is a high mountain of ice.
However, once a tipping point is achieved – due to higher temperatures or simply soot – it is going to decompose very quickly.
It starts melting a bit first, the hight of ice goes down, the upper surface becomes even warmer, and the process accelerates exponentially beyond the tipping point.
Even if the temperatures fall down – even significantly down, – the ice won’t restore then.
It will need another ice age to recover the Groenland ice.
Have we reached the tipping point already?
Who knows…
But there is little doubt, the tipping point does exist.
Alex:
We know that there are areas still covered by ice that were not covered during the Medieval Viking settlements. And that obviously did not create a tipping point because the ice cover significantly increased after that.
We also have good evidence that warming yields increased snowfall as a general rule. This provides a strong negative (stabilizing) feedback effect.
So in the NWO (New Warm Order) Florida will be under water due to sea level rise. No problem, there’ll be a lot more “real estate” available to move to in warm, “Florida of the North” Greenland! Just bring your sunglasses and tanning lotion to be safe.
How much energy over the 2 month melting season will be required to melt the entire existing ice sheet along with the snow that accumulates during the 10 month accumulation season? Do the math and report back.
Alex
You stated, “It starts melting a bit first, the hight of ice goes down, the upper surface becomes even warmer, …”
Two points: 1) most of the melting is at the margins, which doesn’t really have an effect on the height at the center; 2) What little melting does occur inland is primarily the result of sunlight because it is extremely rare for the air temperature to get above freezing in the center of the glacier. If you live in an area where it snows in the Winter, you have probably experienced a day when it is cold enough that one has to bundle up to stay warm; yet, the snow may be melting on the sidewalks from the sun.
You also said, “…, the tipping point does exist.” Possibly! However, Greenland has not experienced it since at least the beginning of the Pleistocene. Even during the Eemian, all the ice did not melt. And then the ice cap built back up. At the current rate of melting, it would take about 14,000 years for all the ice to melt. A lot can happen in that amount of time. So, your dogmatic claim that a Tipping Point exists seems to be an act of faith that cannot be proven.
http://www.iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk/research/climatechange/glacial_interglacial/eemian/
“But there is little doubt, the tipping point does exist.”
For several reasons no. One is that as the ice sheet shrinks the glacier fronts will end up on land, where there is no calving, only melting. The result is a considerably steeper glacier profile. Another is that if the ice grows thinner, the ground under it will rise, partially compensating fo the thinning.
The end result can be seen in the ice-cores fom the last interglacial which was 5-8 degrees warmer than now in Greenland and may have reduced the ice-volume by as much as 30-50% (though it took 10,000 years). However studies of the gas bubbles in the interglacial ice shows that the central part of the icecap was at the most a few hundred meters thinner.
Incidentally Central Greenland is gaining mass:
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/mass/Grace_combine_Sm_DK_20190800.png
Wasn’t there a WW2 bomber found near 2000 that crashed in Greenland during the war and was subsequently buried in almost 300 feet of snow?
Without global warming…er a climate change would it have been buried in 1,000 feet of snow?
Would it have been buried under 300 feet of ice in just 55 years if the climate had been warming in the 40’s thru the 90s? Think about it.
That sort of tells me the climate tends to cycle back and forth. I recall the remains of a couple of WWII aviators were found on a California glacier some years ago. How did it crash on a glacier during the war, get covered in snow and ice for fifty years then suddenly reappear?
A glacier flows. Anything buried in a glacier will ultimately come out at the glacier front.
Even Walt Disney (or at least Carl Barks) knew this. I remember a cartoon where Scrooge McDuck went to Alaska to retrieve a sled loaded with gold dust that he had lost in a glacier crevasse during the gold rush 50 years earlier, and which he figured was now about to melt out.
“Think about it”
It could be. How fast it is buried depends on the accumulation rate, and a warmer climate would likely mean a higher accumulation rate (=more snow). Remember that the ice cap calves/melts at the edges and accumulates at the centre (where the buried aircraft are). Whether the cap as a whole grows or shrinks depends on the balance between accumulation and loss, not their absolute values. So, yes, faster burial is perfectly possible in a shrinking icecap.
More like hysterics.
There are pointing tips in Greenland, but no tipping points. Greenland is a bowl filled with ice. The ice sheet gets reduced during interglacials, but it won’t melt away until the Late Cenozoic (Quaternary) Ice Age is over, and that might take a few million years.
“the tipping point does exist.”
As a point of FANTASY !
“This work was supported by grants from NASA”-and this tells you all you need to know…”
Living a superstitious dark age of climate obsession is so predictable.
The frigging ice is still pulling back to uncover earlier human settlements.
As paleontologists like to point out to bible thumping funddies, “We have the fossils, idiot”.
Well to the climate kooks: We have the archaeology, idiots!
Greenland is just fine.
Climate fundamentalist kooks are still as full of crap as ever.
Well said, Hunter!
I thought about commenting, but I see The WATTS regulars have the silliness under control. Stay sane and safe.
I think the most remarkable thing about the article is that it doesn’t mention or blame CO2 or humans for the warming. Maybe it’s in the full study, but they usually tout that in the press release. Also, they note that it would be “miraculous” if humans somehow found a way to slow or stop the warming, and talk about mitigation and adaptation. I can’t find anything to object to in this description, although the study itself may be different.
Apparently the Greenland Ice Sheet completely melted away during the Medieval warm period, and nobody noticed.
The study’s authors seem to feel that the amount of ice flowing out of Greenland will stay constant, regardless of the size of the glaciers.
The reality is, that as the glaciers shrink, the amount of pressure pushing the glaciers forward will decrease, and this will decrease the rate of flow for the glacier.
If current snowfall is insufficient to balance out the current amount of calving, then the glacier will shrink and the amount of calving will go down.
Nearly 40 years of data from a single source — well, if you are a 28-year-old researcher that’s like forever. Two decades of relative steady-state followed by two decades of negative balance means negative balance numbers are forever after? And the two decades of negative balance is only cumulatively negative, as there have been positive balance years in the meantime? So we’ve reduced 40-some years of complex data to two data points: before = Awesome! and after = We’re Doomed!
It’s also notable that their nearly 40 years of data just happenings to start at a trough in the cyclical temperature fluctuations. A rather plunk bunch of cherries or seems.
Looking at the Danish Meterological Institue SMB data for August 11,12 & 13 2020 The snow mass which went below the zero line 9 days later than normal in June has gone 4 Gigatons above zero on Aug 12th & and additional 2 Gigatons on the 13th.well above the gray bar deviation and 10 Gigatons above the 1981-2010 mean SMB. August 13th is at least 9 days before the zero crossing point for the 0 Loss-Gain point mean. At least 18 day shorter SMB loss period. It is interesting that DMI no longer posts the accumulating SMB chat that I can find as I cannot qualify for access to their data anymore. There seems to be some disagreement in data or data interpretation between DMI and TOSU/NASA. It seems like DMI is embarrassed by their own data, but that could just be transferance on my part. /sarc
Who pays for these climate change reports that are released at a rate (I’m guessing) of around 10 per week?
If you pay any type of tax, you do.
Meanwhile the Danish Polar Portal detects a record increase in surface mass balance of 4GT:
http://polarportal.dk/forsiden/
Is this the same Greenland we are talking about? How many Greenlands are there?
The largest glacier in Greenland, Jacobshavn Isbrae, about 4-5 years ago reversed its decline and is now thickening, slowing and advancing further.
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Jakobshavn_Isbrae_Glacier_bucks_the_trend
The sea in Disoo Bay near the Jacobshavn glacier is cooling, supporting the glacier’s recovery.
14 Gigatons the last 5 days in a row
what a crock of BS
Chillax, Y’all! As archaeologists chisel the remnants of Eric the Red’s settlement out of the southern Greenland permafrost, we know with certainty it was warmer 1000 years ago than it is today. Cold and advancing glaciers are what killed those intrepid but doomed Norse settlements and entombed them in ‘mother nature’s’ icy clutches. The real ‘point of no return’ is a regression to advancing glaciers and ice ball Earth.
Kansas – The Point Of No Return
https://youtu.be/iFWtsT5zRKo
Columbus Ohio “Nearly 40 years satellite data from Greenland show glaciers have shrunk”
With no data before that, and computer model guess work in the future.
This research means nothing. I did notice all this research was funded ! which does mean
a great incentive to come up with something alarming.
Greenland has an average mean temperature -30C in the north and -20C in the south
and I cannot see that changing much in the future.
In the Antarctic the story is the same, Glaciers melting and average mean temperatures
of -30C to – 50C
I just checked on the Antarctic sea ice, and that seems well within the normal range.
As for the Arctic sea that reached a minimum in 2007 and 2012 and has if anything
started to grow since then.
“even if global warming were to stop today, the ice sheet would continue shrinking”
This is true for both the GIS and the WAIS not because of AGW but because they are both located in geologically active zones.
GIS: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/07/01/arctic/
WAIS:
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/06/27/antarctica/
Another image I was going to post as a new post.
Seems appropriate to put it here.
This sub-surface geological activity also means that using gravity based measurements to calculating changes in ice mass is totally meaningless.
Also this
https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/tambonthongchai.com/15756