Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
An online friend of mine alerted me to a curious change in the Greenland Ice Sheet. From the Danish Polar Portal, here are two of their graphics.
Figure 1. Surface Mass Balance (SMB), polar year 2022-2023.
The Polar Portal site says:
The blue curve shows the current season’s surface mass balance measured in gigatonnes (1 Gt is 1 billion tonnes and corresponds to 1 cubic kilometre of water).
The dark grey curve traces the mean value from the period 1981-2010.
The light grey band shows differences from year to year. For any calendar day, the band shows the range over the 30 years (in the period 1981-2010), however with the lowest and highest values for each day omitted.
And what is the surface mass balance (SMB) when it’s at home? Again from the Polar Portal.
The difference between snowfall and runoff is known as the SURFACE mass balance. It is always positive over the course of a year as not all fallen snow runs off the ice sheet again.
The surface mass balance is NOT identical to the TOTAL mass balance (i.e. overall gain or loss of the ice cap), which also includes the mass that is lost when glaciers calve off icebergs, the melting of glacier tongues as they come into contact with warm seawater and frictional and other effects at the bottom of the ice sheet.
From my perspective, the oddity is that despite the warmer-than-usual conditions of the North Atlantic for this time of year, the surface mass balance has grown more than at any time in the period 1981-2010. Go figure.
One thing you can depend on the weather to do, and that is, it won’t do what you depend on it to do …
However, this is just the surface mass balance (SMB). The total mass of the Greenland Ice Sheet continues to decline. And here’s where the graphic trickery comes into play. Folks like the Polar Portal are more than happy to show graphs of the cumulative loss of Greenland ice.
Figure 2. Polar Portal graph of ice loss since 2003
Looking for a longer dataset, here’s one I made, based on the British Antarctic Survey (IMBIE) data. Of course, I couldn’t make it all boring like most graphs. I like my graphs to be little works of art.
Figure 3. Cumulative ice mass loss since 1992, Greenland.
YIKES! At the rate that it’s falling, we’re clearly about to lose the Greenland Ice Cap entirely …
… however, this is just the loss. What kind of difference does this make to the total mass of the Greenland Ice Sheet? Figure 4 shows that change.
Figure 4. Change in total Greenland ice mass, 1992-2021.
Once again, it looks like we’re on the brink of a precipice.
However, there’s still one small detail to take into account. When we’re looking at totals of things, like changes in the total Greenland ice mass, it’s important that the vertical “Y” axis starts at zero. This is called a “zero-based” graph, and in the wonderful world of climate science, they’re pretty rare. Figure 5 shows why the alarmists don’t like them.
Figure 5. Zero-based graph of the change in total Greenland ice mass, 1992-2021. Note that this is the exact same data as in Figure 4 just above.
Whew! Looks like the catastrophe is averted. And in fact, if Greenland continues to lose ice at the current rate, it will all be gone around the year 14700AD.
[After comments, edited to add …] Are there times when non-zero-based graphs are appropriate? Absolutely. We need both kinds of graphs. But far too often these days, non-zero-based graphs are just used to frighten folks who are unaware of the relative sizes of things.
Puts me in mind of the old joke. A scientist says “The sun will go nova in five billion years”. One of the people in the audience stands up and says “What! That’s terrifying! What did you say?”
The scientist repeats his statement, and the man says “Oh, thank heavens. I figured I was gonna have to change my lifestyle. I thought you said five million years!”
Crazy world, crazy tune …
Regards to all, h/t to David Hart,
w.
Yeah, I know you’ve heard it before: When you comment, please quote the exact words you are referring to. It avoids all kinds of misunderstandings.
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I found the paragraph the warmer ocean temperatures to be amusing. I grew up near Lake Michigan and went to college near Lake Superior. That kind of snow would be called lake effect snow. The water temperature was warmer and the land temperature was colder leading to significant snow accumulation. Happened every year.
I wrote an Email to Martin Stendel and asked when he would publish the report from Greenland 2022 because it was extremely late this year. It was March 14 2023 and he answered that it was almost finished and he would publish it the coming days. I was sure the ice would have been increasing because it had almost been 10 C below normal all summer long and the SMB had been 471 Gt. When it came it had been melting and calving 12 % more than ever before and i was stunned. 560 Gt was gone over the coldest summer in several decades an had never been over 500 Gt before.
He wrote to me and said they have three models and the one he had used in the report was not the one we see here where the SMB reached 471 Gt last year. Instead he had used TMB = SMB + MMB + BMB like this TMB=-85.4, SMB=423.3, MMB=-486.3 og BMB=-22.4.
471- 423,3 = 47,7 Gt less than the official number in the report and that was the reason that he ended up in TMB= -85.4 Gt. This is nuts as I see it. It could not have been like this as I see it because of the extremely cold summer and it is sad.
2017 and 2018 was warm years at Greenland and the TMB was positive because of a huge precipitation both years, and the total melting and calving was less than 500 Gt. So 560 Gt seems impossible to me in 2022.
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/PolarPortal/season_report/polarportal_saesonrapport_2022_EN.pdf
My £100 bet on equinoctial Arctic ice being more than 4Mkm2 is open for another month then it’s like stealing sweets from children
Willis
The DMI has automated weather stations called PROMICE dotted around Greenland. The locations are shown by the black circles.
These have links to the data which is displayed in pop up windows. Not all links work all the time. But there is a different site to access the data.
A brief survey today and I couldn’t find any above 0’C. Even on the coast in the South. Flaming June in Greenland right enough
Lies, Damned Lies and Alarmists presentations. The Green zealots are giving statistics a bad name….
Well, looking at available satellite images we find that Greenland is still covered with ice and snow. Oh, we are not supposed to believe reality? Got it.
I tend to agree with Mosher that figure 5 is almost meaningless.
It is a crude illustration of some stability.
But anomalies, or a closer view, are more interesting from a scientific point of view.
Or should we ask Spencer to use absolute zero as reference for his temperature graphs. You can argue that it is closer to the truth. But what kind of information can it give?
Fig. 5 makes a point that is lacking in Fig.3 and Fig. 4. The same could be said if only Fig. 5 is presented.
It is more misleading to focus on “anomalies” graphed with highly expanded scales when that data essentially consists of random noise resulting from measurement imprecision. Worse yet to run linear regressions on noise and think the trend shows some attributable causation. A linear regression of any series of random numbers will almost always show a nonzero “trend”.
The problem is that it gives the wrong information. When one looks at the graph it looks like there has been a huge increase.
Let’s look an an anomaly that grows from 0.5 to 2.0. That is a (2.0 – 0.5)/0.5 = 300%. A humongous amount of growth. But, what if the real absolute values were 16.5 to 18.0. Now you have (18 – 16.5)/16.5 = 9%.
A much smaller amount in the real world. That is why sceptics continually point out that CO2 growth has beenn from 0.03% to 0.04% of the atmosphere. Basically from a miniscule amount to a miniscule amount.
” That is why sceptics continually point out that CO2 growth has beenn from 0.03% to 0.04% of the atmosphere. Basically from a miniscule amount to a miniscule amount.”
Huh? The percentage rise from 0.03% to 0.04% is 33%. Just as it is from 300 ppm to 400ppm, or 0.0003 to 0.0004.
The reason “sceptics” like to use percentage is to give the impression the amount is irrelevant, and possibly to confuse people with the use of percentages.
It’s telling that you want to ignore the the actual percentage rise of CO2 whilst using percentage change for temperature. A percentage change in temperature is physically meaningless unless you are starting from absolut zero, and even then it’s meaningless for most situations. What does a rise from 100K to 200K mean, compared with a rise from 200K to 400k considering they are both the same percentage rise?
Yes, at times a non-zero-based graph is appropriate But most times, they are more relevant to the real world.
Regarding absolute zero, that’s the basis for the Kelvin scale … and if you use anything else to do any kind of thermodynamic calculations, you’ll get the wrong answer.
And since the climate is a giant heat engine turning solar power into work, for those calcs you must use Kelvin. Not optional.
Finally, a zero-based temperature graph in Kelvin reveals a very important truth—the earth’s temperature is astoundingly stable. It only rose by about half a measly percent over the entire 20th century. And it was that fact that impelled me to begin looking for the reasons for that stability, and that convinced me that overall the feedback must be negative rather than positive.
Best regards.
w.
Excellent description. The graphing program I used at work a long time ago allowed one to “squeeze” the vertical scale between 0 and some number. It put a symbol like a “Z” in the y axis to indicate it was squeezed.
If the temperature was 300K, yo could squeeze between 0 – 300 and then use as small a scale as you needed. For example, 300.01, 300.02, 300.03, … . This let you plot small changes in large numbers. The small percent change in the absolute values was pretty obvious.
According to figure 2. if the tides stopped and the seas were still and I stood with the tip of my toes at the water’s edge on a beach with no net rise or fall of the land for a hundred years, at the end of that time the water will still not reach my ankle bone.
I always think of the WW2-era planes that crashed on Greenland during the war and then were discovered a few years ago under 300 feet of ice.
“[…] with the lowest and highest values for each day omitted.”
I do pray that they really meant a given 24 hour period.
A day can last for months, or be non-existent, in much of Greenland.
The lady Grace is not to trust!
Satellite measurement of mass change does not see if land is sinking or gaining.
I expand on SCALE.Rather at length. Sorry. Needed to write this all down at once.
SCALE. The question is, “compared to what, exactly”. Climate science uses scale abuse everywhere, as well as things like ice loss..
SCALE OF TEMPERATURE: How many people realise the relevant scale for climate change is 288 deg K? 1deg is 0.3%
To my subject:
SCALE OF CONTROL: My core argument is about the real scale of the holistic climate control, system gain and feedback phasing. The climate change due to CO2 is 1W/m^2. Compared to what?
It’s a tiny perturbation within the average 340W/m^2 incident on Earth’s surface, which can vary +/-15% by our orbit alone. How significant is this 1W/m^2 WRT the dominant Earth climate control feedbacks, caused by a narrow band of LWIR leaving the Earth higher in the atmosphere than the rest from the surface, so its radiated where its colder, so radiation at that frequency is at a lower intensity so there is less cooling at these frequencies, because Stefan Boltzman.
How is this GHE controlled? Ocean SST rises, the surface cools itself by evaporating more latent heat of cooling to the Tropospheres , mostly as water vapour. There it makes clouds by condensing and releasing LWIR to s[ace, at the lower cooler rate, and the resulting clouds reflect the sun a bit more, so the surface heat is transported off Earth and the solar heating of the ocean reduced. All is quickly cosy and stable again. Simple!
AND Other LWIR frequencies that radiate directly to space from the surface also radiate more as all surface temperatures rise – because STefan Boltzman.
How much feedback? SCale?
Massive feedbacks are available to contain tiny CO2 GHE perturbations, and maintain thermal equilibrium, but you wouldn’t think so from the BS talked about CO2 1W/m^2 of CO2 by climate “scientists” whose closest understanding of a control system is their Cruise control or the thermostat at home. THeir partial approach to the much more powerful holistic control system, is analogous to treating Earth as an un-controlled open system with no feedbacks except positive (water GHE form CO2 warming) which the slighest effect will “Tip”. No it won’t. Because it has strong & dominant feedback. THis partial exclusion of key controls by assertion is total bullshit by modellers without science.
First the evidence. What happens in measured reality? Whatever AGW gross perturbation is, it has no measurable net effect on natural change, as compared to the record of past natural change. How can that be? Because it and other such small perturbations to the system are strongly and negatively fed back, hence controlled. BY what?
THe Earth’s control is not a thermostat as we know it, its smarter.
It’s an “Enthalpystat” and sets then maintains the temperature that creates a stable planetary thermal equilibrium. Whatever that needs to be. THe change in this enthalpy balance temperature is the long term temperature range on Earth we observe in geology.
To scale the feedbacks I will use the absolute values, these are variable with temperature to provide the feedback. The problem is although its overtly “adequate”, the exact amounts of variability are widely questioned and differently reported, but they are real and adequate, for sure, many W/m^2 per deg K. I suggest well over 10W/m^2 per deg SST globally. From what?
The oceanic control to cool the surface and reduce insolation.that occurs in the context of cloud albedo is an evaporative/convective cooling of 104W/m^2, and the total cloud albedo currently is reported as 50W/m^2. To the likely change in these large effects (e.g. how much more latent heat for a 1 deg rise in SSTs in the Tropics at 300K plus the incremental Stefan Boltzman 2.4W/m^2 per deg change feedback to warming as regards the total LWIR radiation from the surface and Troposphere to space. 240W/m^2 x (289/288)^4 = 2.4W/m^2.
All large and capable negative feedbacks. It appears to me that natural response variations of these largest feedbacks are not well considered in IPCC models. AS I understand them, the negative feedback effects of Tropospheric clouds and the background effects of natural change are simply ignored by IPCC models, so the real major feedback effects are assumed to be unresponsive to the CO2 perturbation, while the natural change is denied so it can be attributed to the chosen effect, by presumptive attribution, not justified by the science.
THere is an effect from CO2, but its negated by the feedbacks, and this is why actual change is not seen to vary outside natural cyclic expectation of natural change seen in geology.
IPCC models hopelessly over amplify the net planetary effect of CO2 by these deceits. . Because it’s an over amplified gross effect on water GHE boosted steroids, not real, and before feedback. The net effect is unobservable after subtraction of natural background change. As the record shows.
TOTALLY fed back.
I suggest the self evident reality is that planet Earth has so much control feedback available it is not even bovvered by 1W/m^2 of AGW.
THis is a system that can brush off a Krakatoa and even rapidly reset the climate after a major asteroid impact, enough to wipe out most life on land, creatures and plants. But it gets better, and quickly.
I rest my case, after 10 years of studying it. THis control system is good for another Billion years or two, as long as there are oceans covering the Earth and excepting cataclysmic scale events. The Earth system has clearly handled past solar variability in the past, even Great summers and winters of every 23Ka Milankovitch cycle involve 20W/M^2 variability in the solar insolation on Earth, another solar variability is probably solar winds that cause the smaller short term changes.
The Earth’s SSTs have varied several degrees to maintain a thermal equilibrium throughout 500Million years of change, now at the coldest it ever been, on an ice age scale of time. It has always coped. Why should it stop for 1W/m^2 of CO2, when its has had much more CO2 in the past and the fact is its effect falls of exponentially with concentration, and is mostly over at 400ppm.
THis is a planet that clearly has a very powerful control system of many Watts/m^2 per deg SST that has proved effective over a SCALE of tens of degrees, on the record so far.
It tips for no one.
The total possible perturbation due to CO2 is so small as to be insignificant WITHIN THE SCALE OF THE NATURAL NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.
I rest my case.What CO2? Where? Can’t see it. Your witness. Comments? Story Tip? Tory Strip?
Nice description of a complicated control system.