By Vijay Jayaraj
September 13, 2021
The mainstream media is hell-bent on instilling climate fear among the masses. This means that they can never get over their obsession with weather events in the Arctic, which is one of their favorite subjects for projecting a climate catastrophe.
The Greenland Ice Sheet has been of great interest to climate alarmists. Any small change in ice sheet mass is promoted in the media as a product of man-made climate change. Last week, media outlets across the globe claimed that there has been rain for the first time at the Greenland summit.
“Rain fell at the normally snowy summit of Greenland for the first time on record,” read CNN’s headlines. Others went a step further and declared it a sign of climate doomsday. “Rain On Greenland Ice Sheet, Possibly A First, Signals Climate Change Risk,” read another headline.
Unfortunately, for the mainstream media, climate history nearly always comes back to haunt their claims of unprecedented events. Records reveal that this is not the first rainfall in Greenland, and certainly not the first on the Greenland summit peak, which stands at around 10,000 feet.
Records Show Past Rain Events in Greenland
A 1975 report prepared for National Science Foundation (NSF) by Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory documented the summer climate at Greenland ice sheet. It showed at least two rainfall events have occurred, once in 1933 at 8,840 feet and again in 1950 at a much higher altitude. The 1950 rainfall event was above 9,500 feet and very close to the Greenland summit peak, thus contradicting mainstream media claims of unprecedented rainfall at the summit.
The NSF report states, “According to Hogue (1964) heavy rainfall seldom occurs above 6,000 ft on the Greenland ice sheet. However, at Watkins (75°N, 48°W, and elevation 8,840 ft) rain was reported to have occurred in July 1933. Hogue also notes that in the Centrale-Eismitte area, drizzle and rain were each reported once in a three-year period, on 20 and 21 June 1950, respectively.”
The site of the previous rainfall event, Centrale-Eismitte, is close to the 9,800-feet mark where the current rainfall event occurred. It would be a pure lie — or gross ignorance — to claim that rainfall at such an altitude has never occurred before at Greenland.
Headlines That Portray an Incomplete Reality
Besides misleading the public on the “first-time rain event,” these media outlets have also concealed the reality of the situation in Greenland, especially in 2021.
This year, Greenland’s surface mass balance (SMB) was higher than the 30-year average during many days of the year. SMB is the net balance between the accumulation and ablation on a glacier’s surface, typically denoted by mass gain and mass loss.
Data on Greenland’s SMB is available at Polar Portal, where Danish research institutions display the results of their monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the sea ice in the Arctic.
SMB data for 2021 show that there has been no significant melting and there was also a surprising gain in the SMB during the summer months, which is usually the melting season.
During July and August, the total accumulation of SMB (as measured in gigatons) was higher than the 30-year average (1981-2010). This can be attributed to the unexpected gain in SMB during the summer months.
So not only has the media lied to the public about the “never-before” rainfall event, it has also withheld the truth about the above-average SMB that was witnessed during the past 50 days.
This endless parade of lies about Greenland and the Arctic will likely continue. Even above-average snow accumulations will be kept out of the news and one-time warm weather events (especially during the melt season) will be used as “proof” for global warming. Vijay Jayaraj is a Contributing Writer to the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a master of science degree in environmental science from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
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Melting has been very low. In fact only 70% of normal melting.
Started below and ended above average.
Melting area has been high but melting low. It shows how temperature is an important factor.
At the other end of the temperature scale https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58494641
Methinks the whistleblower behind the Climate Gate releases a decade ago might be found in Bengalu?
When the climate alarmists come out with their over hyped the first time ever stories I ask a simple question when given the chance.
I ask them what about the June 1248 AD rain on Greenland’s peak?
The look of amazement is always worth asking the question. The usual exchange of how do you know about that, goes on?. Followed by my simple observation, if the journo doesn’t know about June 1248 AD, how can he or she claim, this event, is the first time ever it happened, event?
They diidn’t say it was the first time it had happened. They said it was the first time it was recorded. Even the CNN headline makes that clear.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-58549373 more propaganda
I look at the Weather Channel radar every day…Snow falls somewhere on Greenland nearly every day…On Sunday, September 12, Ex-hurricane Larry dumped 10 Gigatons of snow and ice…It had snowed in the days before and still is today September 14…
Sorry Rory, for all his good points Trump was an utterly useless president and not fit to govern any country let alone the USA. Your claims of vote rigging put you on a par with the climate alarmist crowd
And the demented child-sniffing toad who is currently installed in the White House is fit to govern the the USA? Whoever is pulling his strings and writing his speeches is not fit either!
Simon?
No kidding we love these policies now 😉
Oh, really? Then why is Trump ahead of Biden in the opinion polls?
A recent poll also shows that the majority of Americans now think Biden should be impeached.
Chris
(Deleted 21 completely off topic comments that were about COVID, Marxism and Trump election, the topic is this: The Media Is Lying About Greenland and Climate Change
Stay on topic!) SUNMOD
Science isn’t lying about Greenland conditions:
‘On August 14, 2021, rain was observed at the highest point on the Greenland Ice Sheet for several hours, and air temperatures remained above freezing for about nine hours. This was the third time in less than a decade, and the latest date in the year on record, that the National Science Foundation’s Summit Station had above-freezing temperatures and wet snow. There is no previous report of rainfall at this location (72.58°N 38.46°W), which reaches 3,216 meters (10,551 feet) in elevation. Earlier melt events in the instrumental record occurred in 1995, 2012, and 2019; prior to those events, melting is inferred from ice cores to have been absent since an event in the late 1800s. The cause of the melting event that took place from August 14 to 16, 2021, was similar to the events that occurred this late July, where a strong low pressure center over Baffin Island and high air pressure southeast of Greenland conspired to push warm air and moisture rapidly from the south.’
Greenland Ice Sheet Today | Surface Melt Data presented by NSIDC
You make a big deal about a rare WEATHER event that has happened long ago and probably in every century in the past.
You say this:
Which is based on a few decades of limited data, what about the last 15,000 years of the interglacial period?
You run on very little evidence to make absurd claims, it is a problem you always have shown.
The long ago past doesn’t matter unless it can be utilized to produce a hockey stick graph
The point of the article from the headline onwards is an accusation that the media lied about the rainfall event.
Turns out they did not.
No he said they were lying my omission of previous rainfall events of the 1930’s and 1950’s while the media were making these headlines that YOU ignored:
In the CNN article is this stupid mouthful from Scambos:
Yeah a SINGLE WEATHER event gets his bullshit rolling.
Meanwhile the other events from the 1930;s and 1950;s was completely ignored because that would greatly dilute the propaganda message they are trying to mislead the public with.
Reading the article in full and think objectively.
“Meanwhile the other events from the 1930;s and 1950;s was completely ignored because that would greatly dilute the propaganda message they are trying to mislead the public with.”
No. they were not mentioned because they did not happen at the Summit. Not even close.
You are being pedantic, what part of ”very close to the Greenland summit peak” don’t you get.
Irony. A post accusing others of lying describes a location 200kms distant and 700ft lower than the summit as ‘very close’.
The elevation offset alone is sufficient to make Eismitte more than a degree warmer.
Stuff that has happened before, cannot be proof that this time it was caused by CO2.
It is worth considering whether greater calving of the shelf glacier is a sign of warming, or conversely a significant increase in shelf ice mass?
This data shows that most of the loss of ice occurs along the edge of the ice sheet, where independent observations also indicate that the ice is thinning, that the glacier fronts are retreating in fjords and on land, and that there is a greater degree of melting from the surface of the ice.
High on the central region of the ice sheet, however, the GRACE satellites show that there is a small increase in the mass of the ice. Other measurements suggest that this is due to a small increase in precipitation/snowfall.
http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/mass-and-height-change/
The map shows the degree to which the Greenland Ice Sheet has become either thicker or thinner during the three-year period from January 2017 until December 2019. It is evident that near many of the large outlet glaciers, the ice sheet has thinned by several metres each year, but we do also see that large parts of the ice sheet have thickened due to precipitation during the three years.
In this map we see a thickening at the front of Jakobshavn Isbræ; a signal that has been confirmed by air-borne measurements (Khazendar et al., 2019)
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/mass/CS2_uk_HD_large.jpg
Jakobshavn Isbrae has been the single largest source of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet over the last 20 years. During that time, it has been retreating, accelerating and thinning. Here we use airborne altimetry and satellite imagery to show that since 2016 Jakobshavn has been re-advancing, slowing and thickening. We link these changes to concurrent cooling of ocean waters in Disko Bay that spill over into Ilulissat Icefjord. Ocean temperatures in the bay’s upper 250 m have cooled to levels not seen since the mid 1980s. Observations and modelling trace the origins of this cooling to anomalous wintertime heat loss in the boundary current that circulates around the southern half of Greenland. Longer time series of ocean temperature, subglacial discharge and glacier variability strongly suggest that ocean-induced melting at the front has continued to influence glacier dynamics after the disintegration of its floating tongue in 2003. We conclude that projections of Jakobshavn’s future contribution to sea-level rise that are based on glacier geometry are insufficient, and that accounting for external forcing is indispensable.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0329-3
“Ocean temperatures in the bay’s upper 250 m have cooled to levels not seen since the mid 1980s.”
Interesting.
I bet some alarmists are getting nervous.
Jakobshavn Glacier in west Greenland viewed by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission on 29 April 2019. In recent years, Greenland has been losing more ice through this glacier than from anywhere else on this huge ice sheet. Various types of satellite data have been used to understand and monitor the glacier’s flow over the last 20 years. This revealed that the glacier was flowing at its fastest and losing the most ice in 2012–13. In places, the main trunk of the glacier was deflating by 10 m a year as it adjusted dynamically to ice loss and melting. However, information from satellites such as ESA’s CryoSat and the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission show that between 2013 and 2017, the region drained by the glacier stopped shrinking in height and started to thicken. The overall effect is that Jakobshavn is now flowing more slowly, thickening, and advancing toward the ocean instead of retreating farther inland.
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2019/05/Jakobshavn_Glacier
Here you can see Disko Bay, into which the glacier flows. The fjords into which Greenland’s glaciers flow can be as deep as 1 km.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Disko/20210913TERR.jpg
Oh Duane, you are a world-class nutter if you believe what you just wrote. Despite all the MSM reportage about overwhelmed hospitals and tractor-trailers full of bodies it hasn’t really happened. Instead of believing everything you hear on the telly, get out and investigate on your own, like I did! Or are you still sheltering in place, terrified of catching an illness that the majority of people fully recover from in a few days with some sensible treatments?
So………..because there was recorded rainfall in the 30’s….and again in the…50’s or was it once in the 70’s………….THAT and the statistics on this last year in comparison to a 30 year running average… y’all are loosing your mind over media …lies? For smart people you seem desperate for confirmation of your own bias(es).
Alleged objective scientist Scambos stated from CNN article:
Was he lying by omission of older rain fall events or just too lazy to do a simple research to find them?
In any case he makes that stupid statement over a SINGLE Weather event that happened recently to call it “unprecedented”, yet the Author you are mocking manage in a few minutes of search to find other rain fall events on Greenland of many decades ago which means Scambos is wrong in saying it was unprecedented, you sure you want to continue to ignore the obvious Media propaganda angle here?
Your ‘precedents’ are secondhand eyewitness accounts of rain or drizzle that lasted one day each and occurred at least 700ft below and 200km distant from the Summit. This was a 3 day event that dropped 7 billion tonnes of water and encompassed the Summit. No, this has not happened before in the record.
Never disputed that it rained in those places, what I keep pointing out that it isn’t unprecedented as the media and Scambos claims. It also rained in other decades too which the media and scambos failed to mention but the Author posted it showing the falsehood claims of the media and Scambos statements.
What is Scambos excuse for making his false statement that it was “unprecedented” when all he has is a 71 year record on a low population and before the 1970’s satellite free coverage of the region. They may have been a few other missed rainfalls 0ver 70 years ago, who knows?
It is well known that there have been missed tropical storms and Hurricanes too in the early part of last century and in the 1800’s too because there were no satellite data and few people and irregular ships in the Atlantic to see them.
What about the previous 15,000 years?
Meanwhile Greenland Ice field mass loss is negligible by percentage…….
No one here is going to fall for this climate wailing bullcrap they push.
“Never disputed that it rained in those places, what I keep pointing out that it isn’t unprecedented as the media and Scambos claims.“
Nobody claimed rainfall in Greenland is unprecedented.
It’s a good thing I’m not the pedantic type.
Who exactly are you addressing, Alan?
What bias are you referring to?
The alarmists claim increased amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere are causing the Earth to experience unprecedented weather.
So whenever the alarmist point to some weather event as proof that the Earth is experiencing unprecedented weather, the skeptics come along and say, “Not so fast!”, and then point out similiar weather conditions in the past, when CO2 was not a significant factor. The point being that we are not experiencing unprecedented weather today and CO2 is not the determining factor *because* we are not experiencing unprecedented weather today.
Summit is actually close to 10,600 feet elevation. And clearly you’ve never been there called it a “peak” LOL
They still believe that Jews are at least part of the problem.
From the article: “The NSF report states, “According to Hogue (1964) heavy rainfall seldom occurs above 6,000 ft on the Greenland ice sheet. However, at Watkins (75°N, 48°W, and elevation 8,840 ft) rain was reported to have occurred in July 1933. Hogue also notes that in the Centrale-Eismitte area, drizzle and rain were each reported once in a three-year period, on 20 and 21 June 1950, respectively.”
Both 1933 and 1950 were during warm periods equal to the warmth of today.
When looking in the 2020 report of the polarportal, you may be surprised:
http://polarportal.dk/en/news/2020-season-report/
Figure 2 shows the SMB and TMB of Greenlands icecap.
The Total Mass Balance was at the deepest point in 2012 and since then the mass loss is becoming smaller and smaller. There was no mass loss in 2017 und 2018. In 2019 the mass loss was again high, followed by a small mass loss in 2020.
The trend for 2021 isn’t shown, but there were small losses.
There is a positive trend in greenlands mass loss since 2012.
An other data source for Greenlands SMB:
https://www.climato.uliege.be/cms/c_5652668/fr/climato-greenland
The trend of 2021 ist missing here. Why?
The data through 2021 isn’t available yet. It probably won’t be available until December. But notice how the discharge is a very consistent 500 Gt/yr. We know SMB was 400 Gt during the 2020/21 season which means the TMB will likely come in around -100 Gt.
LinkedIn blocked my post because they said it was against its community standards. I am appealing the block.
Greenland as a whole has not lost much ice over the past three years.
This map shows the extent to which the Greenland ice sheet became thicker or thinner over the three-year period from January 2017 to December 2019. It is clear that near many of the large outflow glaciers, the ice sheet thinned by several meters each year, but we also see that large parts of the ice sheet thickened due to precipitation during these three years.
On the other hand, ice mass increased during the 2020-2021 season as snowfall increased above the 1981-2010 average (gray solid line in lower graph).
The graphic above shows that the cause of melting coastal glaciers must be the subsurface sea temperature, not the air temperature.
Just add to this it will taken between 7000 and 10000 years for Greenland to melt.
I wonder if this is anything to do with Contrails and the accumalation of high clouds. Minnis wrote about the effect in 2004. I have a copy of that paper if anyone would like it. COVID has caused a magnificent experiment to be undertaken with the cessation of air traffic.
From the abstract of Minnis et al. 2004: “Using results from a general circulation model simulation of contrails, the cirrus trends over the United States are estimated to cause a tropospheric warming of 0.28–0.38C decade21, a range that includes the observed tropospheric temperature trend of 0.278C decade21 between 1975 and 1994. The magnitude of the estimated surface temperature change and the seasonal variations of the estimated temperature trends are also in good agreement with the corresponding observations.”
It seems to me that perhaps Greenland would be the most sensitive land mass to contrails as the flights were very dense over there.
Minnis was a genuine scientist and head of Atmospheric Sciences at NASA, nothing to do with GISS as far as I know.
Minnis, P., Ayers, J.K., Palikonda, R. and Phan, D., 2004. Contrails, cirrus trends, and climate. Journal of Climate, 17(8), pp.1671-1685.