Slashdot Mirror
NASA Satellite Measurements Show Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Melt
NASA reports that measurements taken from orbiting satellites indicate the Greenland ice sheet underwent melting over a larger area than they've seen in 30 years of observations. On July 8, the satellites found evidence that about 40% of the ice sheet's surface had melted. Observations just four days later showed 97% of the surface had melted.
"This extreme melt event coincided with an unusually strong ridge of warm air, or a heat dome, over Greenland. The ridge was one of a series that has dominated Greenland's weather since the end of May. 'Each successive ridge has been stronger than the previous one,' said Mote. This latest heat dome started to move over Greenland on July 8, and then parked itself over the ice sheet about three days later. By July 16, it had begun to dissipate. Even the area around Summit Station in central Greenland, which at 2 miles above sea level is near the highest point of the ice sheet, showed signs of melting. Such pronounced melting at Summit and across the ice sheet has not occurred since 1889, according to ice cores analyzed by Kaitlin Keegan at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather station at Summit confirmed air temperatures hovered above or within a degree of freezing for several hours July 11-12."
Photos also surfaced last week showing the Petermann Glacier in Greenland 'calving' — some very large chunks of it broke off and started to drift away.
At the risk of sounding like a denier, I'm not going to freak out just yet, since it says in the article (and partially in the summary) that this is believed to happen every 150 years or so, last time being 1889.
Global warming is Al Gore's sinister plot to control the internet.
The Greenland ice sheet has been there for 110,000 years. They measure for 30. Seems not very representative, but that's just me. /sarc
Such pronounced melting at Summit and across the ice sheet has not occurred since 1889, according to ice cores analyzed by Kaitlin Keegan at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H
It's scary if you look at a trend of only 30 years. And then you compare it to data that's only around 120 years old and find out it's not so bad. I'm not saying the melting isn't bad, just seems to be presumptions to say "unprecedented" and alarmist to use such language given the number of data points.
NASA has been observing the entire ice sheet for only 30 years. But the summit alone has been observed for a longer time, and this is the first time after 140 years, the summit has been observed to melt significantly.
With that much fresh water being added to the North Atlantic, we ought to be talking about the health of the Atlantic Ocean currents that are energized by the temperature difference between equator and polar regions, and the deep water exchange, which is driven by the difference in salinization. Most important of these currents is the Gulf Stream. It stopped several hundred years ago, over the course of a single lifetime, and caused the Little Ice Age in Europe. I've already heard some reports about the speed of the current slowing. An awful lot depends on those currents, and we've heard nary a peep about the implications.
I love how neither the article, nor the summary mention global warming - heck, it's not even in the tags! - but in the first ten posts, half are already decrying the "AGW alarmists".
Hottest in 30 years, since 1889....er 40% melted away, 97%...er wait. What does this really mean?
Oh, that 97% of the top layer of ice exposed to sun and warmth has melted. I am curious...how deep is this melt?
Oh...think that a warm year + drought over North America might, just might lead to a little melting. In fact, if this is the worst drought in 60 years, but only the worst melting in 30 years. Maybe it's not so bad?
LOL
I see a bright future for Greenland. Forget Spain or Greece, take a nice relaxing balmy beach holiday in sunny Greenland. That's where it's going to be at, if you are a property developer looking to build holiday accommodation, resorts, apartments, theme parks, restaurants and cafes. Get in now before the rush. And all that concrete and travelling there by air can only help make the dream come true sooner!
To all those who ignored the actual scientists who warned about global warming in favor of the very very few oil industry sponsored hacks, enjoy your global warming and oceanic acidification that is destroying shellfish and crops worldwide.
It's called consequences.
Adapt or die.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"not seen in 30 years" is not "unprecedented".
This is the wettest winter since 1974 in Australia according to the Bureau of Meteorology, so for there to be stuff like that up north is unsurprising when you consider this little blue ball as a single complete system.
Give it 20 years and we will have droughts again whilst the glaciers will be the thickest on record...
how about this? We give the global warming deniers a win. With one caveat: everyone has to go on public record whether they are firmly in the denial camp, or have publicly argued for inaction. Then, if at some point in the future, the evidence DOES rise to such a level as to completely erase the deniers legitimacy, we get to kill them all (and their children of course). are they willing to vote with their lives? they sure as hell appear to be willing to vote with poor peoples lives.
So is this weather or climate? Because if it's weather isn't it just the equivalent to having an unusually warm winter in Eastern Europe or something? Did Greenland have an unusually warm winter or an unusually hot summer this year? That wasn't mentioned in the article. Perhaps someone at NASA is in the market for an oceanfront home? If global warming will reduce the market price for oceanfront property I'm all for it.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Finally the Greenland will live up to its name!
"Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data. "But if we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Bertrand Russell: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are so confident while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Now, you seem awfully confident that almost every climate scientist is plain wrong about something. You must be one of those economic alarmists, who believes that reducing carbon emissions will cripple the economy -- the same shrill alarmism that was used against acid rain and CFCs (the ozone hole). In all three cases, the economic alarmists were wrong. Taxes on sulphur, CFC and carbon emissions had a negligible negative effect at most on various economies -- sometimes a net positive, because it spurred new economic activity.
But continue with your shrill alarmism that addressing climate change will somehow destroy the economy and usher in world communist government. Ye all seem so very confident about it, that you don't even have to learn what scientists and economists have to say on the issue.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
According to TFA, they observed this via ice cores, not via some sort of manmade records or anything of that sort (excluding the 30 years of satellite data of course). At this point, they consider this an interesting but non-threatening event, with the proviso that if it happens again in the next year or two, then it will be much more concerning.
From TFA:
Adapt or die.
"Bye-bye, California. Hello, new West Coast. My West Coast. Costa Del Lex. Luthorville. Marina del Lex. Otisburg... Otisburg?"
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Nah. I got a better idea.
How about we just laugh at the global warming deniers while they fry in the heat and storms as their homes are flooded?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
During a time when the US is facing its most serious drought since the 1930's, its no time to talk about ice sheets melting or global warming, just like its no time to talk about gun control just after 70 people get shot in a theater. Its not the right time to talk about it! You are welcome to talk about global warming in the middle of the mild winter, or droughts in the rainy season (whenever that is), or shootings and gun control when all is peaceful. A public pandemic is no time to talk about health care, and forest fire season is no time to talk about children playing with matches! People with vested interests could have their vested interests changed. That's just not right.
hasn't been seen for more than 140 years.
Stop and think about that for a moment. That means it happened previously, and nothing bad happened, we're all still here, and Florida isn't underwater yet.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
.... they always make me laugh.
What makes me laugh is that people from both sides are trying to take a measly two centuries(roughly) of climate data and make it mean something significant in a world with a history that is several orders of magnitude greater than humanity's entire existence.
I, for one, plan to spend my time, not freaking out or sticking my head in the sand, but instead, I plan to track down the location of the fountain of youth. There I will wait out the years, recording climate data for the next 500 millenia. When I have completed my mission, I will teleport down to the local Spacemart, purchase a "Made in Sol" time machine that was actually built from parts manufactured in the Beta Epsilon system(complete with lead paint), and I will travel back in time to let the /. community know if humanity was really responsible for global warming or not.....
Everyone is really good at rationalizing specific data points like "it's part of a 150 year trend". The problem is there's world wide evidence and not just glacier melts. There's a measurable trend going back to the industrial revolution when the CO2 release started. It accelerated in the 80s as growth in third world countries kicked in. It's everything from glacier melting to weird weather and from sea level rise to a severe drought in the US to the worst one in Australia in several thousand years. What I keep hearing is every time a piece of evidence shows up is "I can explain that". At what point do we accept that all the "I can explain thats" add up to we've got a problem? Long term what we are staring at isn't a hot planet but one that overreacts to a spike in CO2 causing a worse ice age than the last one. Rationalizing is a little like sticking your head in the sand. Each rationalization is another inch. Eventually your head hits China and the planet is still warming whether you like it or not.
"... and this is the first time after 140 years, the summit has been observed to melt significantly."
Define "significantly". According to TFA, the summit was observed to be at or slightly above 0 degrees celsius for a few hours.
That's not enough to melt a decent snowbank in someone's yard "significantly". I doubt the summit had anything to worry about.
Greenland used to be farm land. It was called, "Green" land for a reason. But then about 600 years ago the planet cooled and Greenland farmers had to abandon their land. Harsh, and no, it wasn't because of humans causing climate change. Rather climate change has happened on a regular basis in cycles over the last several billion years. Now it is warming up and can be farms again.
The reality is that during periods of warming there was greater diversity. People need to stop focusing on climate change and focus instead on the real problems like toxic pollution and war. Global Warming is a just a distraction.
Fuck the glaciers, I hate cold, it's time for these bicthes to melt down already!!!
...for the Greenlanders.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Depends on the wind condition and humidity dont you think?
You don't know what you're talking about. They never taxed any of those things. They were either banned outright, emissions were limited by regulations.
It's always interesting when an article provides precedence for something it labels unprecedented.
Better known as 318230.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Depends on the wind condition and humidity dont you think?"
That's a fair statement, since ice and snow can sublimate directly into the atmosphere, if the air is dry. But on the other hand, it can do that at 10 below too.
Over the past 20K years, sea level has risen about 120m. This averages to be around 60cm/century, with a rather large variance, with long stretches of increase at over twice this rate being quite common. Projections of future sea level increase seem to be centered on or around 100cm/century, which in no way indicates that we ought to panic, nor does it make me feel obligated to let you slaughter my children over.
Any chance we can borrow his Tardis and go back and see what rhe Greenland ice sheet was like 500 years ago, 1000, 10000 etc.
The USA Federal budget for FY2013 will begin 1 October 2012.
The NASA Program Managers with Blessings from the NASA Administrator are trying to raise a fuss in order to persuade Congress to fund NASA at the levels (and beyond) of their request and not the Congressional Budget Office.
There is nothing at all more to this than THAT.
LoL
Wake me when Iceland ices over.
The first thing that the Governments can do is abolish daylight saving - we need less daylight not more.
"The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Selling carbon credits will save us!" - Ha! Bring it on, the sooner the better. What's that? "Hundreds, if not thousands of years?"
it could still be just a random once in a 100M yr event
The Earth's climate is known not to be stable on that sort of timescale, and in fact even on far shorter timescales (e.g. Ice Ages). Hence there is no practical way of knowing whether such an event is a one-off fluke or an indication of a change in the climate. The possibility is to hope the climate remains stable for the next 1,000+ years and then to see whether it occurs again...but the wait will be a long one! It's probably safe to say that once in a 100 MYr events are unlikely to occur twice in a millenium.
The problem with global warming is not with Florida going underwater. The risk of that is pretty low. Rather, the problem is more tornadoes, typhoons and floods causing massive disruption in theeconomic supply chains, as well as droughts causing widespread famine. It is a very serious, very real, civilisational threat. What will happen when we cannot grow enough food to feed the World?
What will happen when the US cannot grow enough food to feed itself? Invade Canada?
You are right. We are completely safe.
An idea just hit me. What if the science is right and we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. What if this melting is actually climate induced? Does that mean that we shouldn't be concerned because previous variations were severe enough to melt Greenland's ice cap? Or perhaps it means that with a warming climate that less severe variations could melt Greenland's ice cap.
Have you thought what might happen in a couple years with additional climate heating and an actual severe variation?
By the way, do you happen to know any farmers in the Midwest? Feel free to ask them if nothing bad is happening right now. In 6 months you can ask around the world. US food exports are going to take a major dive, which is going to spike up prices. Standby for a shitload of unrest.
I'm shocked!
SHOCKED I SAY!
Let all the dumbfucks who decided to live on surfboards in the ocean and build within a cunt's hair of high tide in flood plains drown.
That'll help solve part of the problem. Excessive population contributing too much pollution (thermal, chemical or otherwise) to the environment.
And if they try to swim for safety, just push them back in.
Then let nature sort ITSELF out and stop trying to fuck with systems that nobody on this planet has more than the loosest grasps of.
If this means I die? Well, sucks to be me. But I don't go out expecting "nature" to be friendly and forgiving when I run do something dumb enough to warrant the end of my own existence.
This is yet another outgrowth of the whole "make us safe!" movement of intellectual cripples and others permanently stuck in blind, idiotic childhood where they think the world can be made "fair".
News flash asswipes. The politicians can't keep you safe. The scientists can't keep you safe. Your religions can't keep you safe. YOU can't keep you safe.
Now try growing up and DEALING with the world, rather than expecting it to toss fair dice at you or expecting someone to MAKE it throw fair dice at you.
People nowadays are too fucking spoiled and they know it. What this planet really needs right now is a good case of prolonged, global, universal, life-extinguishing hardship and privation for a couple hundred years to give all these smug, self-entitled know-it-alls a real sense of their place in the universe.
Well, I've said about all I need to say on this now. Go ahead and start modding me down for having an opinion a bunch of spineless know-nothings find "offensive". This is me not giving a shit, not even passing gas.
Fortunately for us, significance has a very precise meaning. The scientific term is meaningless, though, without an hypothesis as a frame of reference.
Ummmmm, Greenland was named that because it used to be green back when it was first discovered. Even allowing for travel/investment brochure hyperbole. Just sayin'...
You must have missed the Al Gore show. Indeed the problem IS that Florida and New York will be under water. Displacement was cited as the number one problem from Global Warming.
As for food, the United States was doing find until the politicians/lawyers decided that Ethanol held market value and/or that Monsanto somehow magically pollinated every plant crop in North America. However, I hold little concern for this as I fully see Disney getting Congress to implement new rules that give Disney all rights to copy, trademark, and patents covering anything that could make Disney money; for the good of the public (or the kids).
What will happen when the US cannot grow enough food to feed itself?
Start managing population growth hopefully?
California will be disappearing because the state government has this fantasy that people will be tracked with GPS monitoring and pay 10 cents per mile as the government invades the last vestiges of privacy.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/07/24/california-driving-tax-gps-tracker-study/
So that's why they called him Erik the Red
Play Command HQ online
It's more like a call to action, or at least observation and thought. If you think you're entitled to not give a fuck, you're wrong. Your current self-righteous calm isn't worth shit.
What's wrong with not using more than is there, and not destroying more than can re-generate? What, exactly, is wrong with that?
More likely that the US would simply reduce/stop exporting cheap basic foods (mainly grains, legumes, and soy), and/or cease the farm subsidy system. The third world would already be starving from overpopulation, food exports are simply making the situation worse. Many countries on Earth would be incapable of supporting their populations without food imports.
When you consider how that food is produced, the situation looks far more dire. AGW will seem like a minor inconvenience if we keep using the world's biggest aquafers faster than they are replenished and fossil nitrogen to produce crops on effectively inert soil. Human population could easily peak in another 20-50 years and crash rapidly rather than gradually decline due to a lack of clean water and food.
But it will be orders more when the temperature is more than zero. And remember this not in the middle of some high rise building, but in the middle of a desert, where it much easier for the wind to carry away water.
I mean if they had all this global warming and melting Greenland Ice Caps in 1889 then what did they do then to overcome the problem? It must have been AGW and they must have done something about it then. We've been told often enough now that the Sun doesn't have a measurable effect on climate, variations of the Earth's orbit are negligible, ocean currents have been dismissed, so it must have been anthropogenic global warming back in 1889 as well. FInd out what they did to fix the problem and we'll do the same thing.
I'm always somewhat amused when I come across arguments that state global warming might just be a trend, blah blah blah, happened before, blah blah blah, it's all natural.
We know Earth has been hit by extinction event asteroids before. If we spotted one coming our way, the same arguments would apply, that it happened before, we're due for another, etc. The point isn't whether it's our fault that it's going to happen, but how to avoid disaster.
Even if we're due for another ice age, and it's perfectly natural and totally not our fault...isn't it in the best of our interests to try to avoid it, failing which...to not hasten it's arrival? Why are we squabbling over whether this is a natural cycle?
Its GREENland and not SNOWland. So, think about it. It used to be green (recently) and it shall be green again. No Problem!
"But it will be orders more when the temperature is more than zero."
Actually no, it won't, as anyone who has good experience with winter Chinook winds can attest. It works best when the air is cold, dry, and moving.
The problem is that when the air is warmer, the humidity is also higher, and it's that much harder for sublimation to take place.
Yes, significance DOES have a very precise meaning (I get it you didn't detect the sarcasm in my comment). The issue is that it just doesn't apply in this case.
They don't need to, the pro-AGW camp is doing it for them. There isn't a single GCM that delivers even moderately accurate predictive results that replicate known paleohistoric records across periods of climatic change. Until GCMs can achieve that, there is no theory of science to strongly back AGW, there is only disjointed evidence used for advocacy.
Science is not a court of law, it doesn't work on "evidence". To do science you have to have a mathematically coherent theory from which you derive testable hypotheses, and then you test those hypotheses against observed data (in this case, paleohistoric data). In climatology, the mathematical models built into the GCM models are the equivalent of the theories, and the simulation runs are the equivalent of the testing of hypotheses. "Oh look, the future comes out hot" is not science. "Oh look, this simulation correlates with the actual climatic record to within expected error bounds" would be science, if repeated many times by many teams and against many datasets, but that is currently totally missing.
Don't bother screaming at deniers until you manage to perform the scientific method properly. They may be right or they may be wrong (my guess is that they're wrong), but until you have the scientific method on your side (NOT just evidence) then you're not a scientist but merely an advocate, and they're quite right to rub your nose in your scientific incompetence.
Title: "Unprecedented" vs. Summary "...has not occurred since 1889"
Of course if the title read "Greenland Ice Sheet Melts Again" no one would have read it.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
>>>> pronounced melting at Summit and across the ice sheet has not occurred since 1889
and since it has occurred before the modern era, then there is some other explanation than
the ones that liberals and democrats keep honking about.
The earth has never before had 7 Billion (and counting) people on it. Never before has so much beachfront land been built upon. Never before have so many depended upon man-made electricity to get through a normal day.
Oh sure, the Earth has gone through these cycles before, but NEVER when so many people rely on corn that's now shriveling in the field, NEVER when billions could die in flooding, or hurricanes, tornadoes, and other weather-related disasters, NEVER when a few weeks without electricity could cause widespread panic and collapse of 'civilization' as we currently understand it.
Our society has changed dramatically since the last time earth went through these cycles. Heck, it might explain how we went from the gleaming age of Rome and into the Dark Ages -- and we could be headed for another Dark Ages. Are you prepared to have your children living in mud huts, eating rat for breakfast?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I don't understand how people can look for reasons to justify that stuff like this is nothing to worry over and vigorously fight to discredit people who raise it as a concern. Even if there was a small chance that global warming due to human activities was to blame for this, shouldn't we all be concerned? The predictions of the impact to global coastlines due to land-based ice sheets melting is pretty much the same across the board; many millions of people will be directly impacted and displaced. I'd say that a slim chance of that happening is quite concerning and is reason enough to take action to try to get this under control. If this does impact the world as many fear, I hope that those who fought to discredit the vast majority of scientists are remembered in history accordingly.
So what were we doing then?
Maybe clearing the great plains of North America.
If we caused both, then how come the climate changes now are predicted to be long term when they weren't in 1889?
So I can assume you give a significant portion of your income to third world countries that don't emit CO2 every year?
More pathetic alarmism. Germany is doing something about reducing its carbon footprint, and their economy has been growing ~ 3% per year whilst the rest of the world economy has tanked. Also, 20% of the USA economy is under a carbon tax -- the New York to the north east -- and they've grown relative to the rest of the country, and their power bills have gone /down/.
Gee, doing something about CO2 means giving away money too the third world, so nothing productive can be done --- NOT.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Hey mister, do you mind if we play on your lawn?
You don't know what you're talking about. They never taxed any of those things. They were either banned outright, emissions were limited by regulations.
Acid rain was reduces with emissions trading
CFCs were phased out, by a mandate I believe. The negotiation process looked pretty convoluted, but it happened during the Carter/Reagan/Bush years, although the industry was busy constructing bullshit counter-narratives back in the 60s. All the same stuff about CO2: ozone whole is natural, volcanos are doing it, human activity is insignificant, there is no consensus, scientists have doubts but are afraid to come forward, this will bring about socialism, environmentalists are being hysterical, this will ruin the economy -- seriously, this war on AGW is nothing new. Fred Singer was behind a lot of this. Hence the similarities.
So we have examples of a mandate and an emissions trading scheme.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
"What's wrong with not using more than is there, and not destroying more than can re-generate? What, exactly, is wrong with that?"
I'm confident that the average slave would have a neutral or perhaps even negative carbon footprint. That doesn't mean that I want 99.99% of the world's population to live in slavery for the purpose of "sustainability".
"If you think you're entitled to not give a fuck, you're wrong"
I don't give a F*** about "climate change" or your opinion regarding my opinion.
If your "call to action" is having a government bureaucrat rationing energy usage for the little people, you can go straight to hell.
If CO2 is the huge apocolypse-causing crisis that the AGW proponents claim it is...
Why have they, for the most part, been at the forefront of the "anti-nuke shut 'em all down NOW" movement for decades?
One could easily come to the conclusion that their aim is not to reduce CO2; their aim is to reduce human access to energy.
It took a thousand years, but it looks like Denmark's about to hit the jackpot.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
What's unnerving about this is that the world is *already* consuming more foodstuffs than it produces. World food reserves are basically gone... and this has just happened over the past 10 years or so. So on top of the additional price volatility experienced because of dwindling food reserves, now we have a weather event that's going to tip prices higher.
If food reserves were in a healthy state, this drought would be a minor uncomfortable period in terms of food prices, just as the droughts of the 80s were. Instead we're going to have a food price spike far, far higher than general inflation.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Right. So why then do you bother to make up not only one, but TWO strawmen. Awww.
Though I appreciate the irony: If we don't voluntarily ween ourselves from stuff like oil, our options will just keep diminishing. The only ones who have an interest to play for time are the ones in control right now, who will stay mobile even when the rest is flapping about like a fish on water. I dare say you're projecting what you're falling for on me. But hey, that's fine, that's par of the course.
wtf? "fish on water" == "fish out of water", obviously :P
And if you figured that out, the rest of us probably could too. But its awesome pointing out others mistakes, isn't it?
Here is the summery of this article: This melting event is normal, but if it wasn't normal we all should be worried.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
Here is where we can all watch the 'Great Melting', http://www.summitcamp.org/status/webcam/.
Hmm .... looks like from the plots that there were indeed a day or two of above 0 C air temperatures some days ago, before the data outage hit.
From my experience this happens every year at the time near when the near-surface air temperatures just start to come above 0 C (32 F).
Well.
I think a Police Officer on the spot of a suspected crime as this might say to the pedestrians, 'Move along ... nothing here.'
LoL
As stated in the very first line, it happened in 1889, BEFORE all the emissions of the 20th century.
google HAARP and you will get all your answers