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Once-Shrinking Greenland Glacier Is Now Growing, NASA Study Shows (nbcnews.com)

kenh shares a report from NBC News: A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds. The Jakobshavn (YA-cob-shawv-en) glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) and thinning nearly 130 feet (almost 40 meters) annually. But it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday's Nature Geoscience. Study authors and outside scientists think this is temporary.

A natural cyclical cooling of North Atlantic waters likely caused the glacier to reverse course, said study lead author Ala Khazendar, a NASA glaciologist on the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) project. Khazendar and colleagues say this coincides with a flip of the North Atlantic Oscillation -- a natural and temporary cooling and warming of parts of the ocean that is like a distant cousin to El Nino in the Pacific. The water in Disko Bay, where Jakobshavn hits the ocean, is about 3.6 degrees cooler than a few years ago, study authors said. While this is "good news" on a temporary basis, this is bad news on the long term because it tells scientists that ocean temperature is a bigger player in glacier retreats and advances than previously thought, said NASA climate scientist Josh Willis, a study co-author. Over the decades the water has been and will be warming from man-made climate change, he said, noting that about 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans.

7 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Still waiting... by Sique · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I can see the global warming right out of my window. I live in the mountains, and I can see the skiing resorts. The one that got built in the 1800s, the one from the early 1900s, the one from the 1950ies, 1980ies and of now. I wonder why all new structures have moved higher up.

    I can also see the terminal moraine left by the glaciers in the 1800s, in the early 1900s, the ones from the 1950ies, 1980ies, and where the glacier ends now. I wonder why they likewise move higher up.

    And I can see the postcards with pictures from the same spot in the 1800s, in the early 1900s, the ones from the 1950ies, 1980ies, and where the snow line ends now. I wonder why it moved higher up too.

    --
    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  2. Re:Still waiting... by Freischutz · · Score: 5, Informative

    For some evidence of global warming. It's been decades now, and everything they've shown us as evidence has turned out not to be the case.

    I wonder if in fifty years they'll be going on about global warming, even when it still isn't happening?

    Here you go: http://berkeleyearth.org/globa..., now rejoice in the fact that your life long quest is over. Perhaps you can spend the rest of your life waiting for Trickle-down economics to start working?

  3. Re:Still waiting... by Freischutz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is local temperature change you are looking at and then claiming it is global warming, and if it were the other way (everything was getting colder locally) you would ignore it and say that it is globally that matters. That is not to say there is not global climate change, there is, but there is also a lot of claims of stuff being related which is not (that is not to even say your local situation is not.) But more to the point when you see a glacier going the wrong way for your theory or whatever you find a way to write it off and then quote the movement of a few buildings locally as proof positive the other way than the evidence in the article? Few people argue about global warming but they do discuss how big a deal it is and if it is caused by man. Also as with your local example of local climate change people adapt to changes.

    The changes I'm seeing all over the N-Atlantic tell me that this is more than a 'local climate change', science confirms this and we have examples of what happened earlier in the earth's history when this much carbon dioxide was de-sequestered into the atmosphere. Long story short, it wasn't pretty. Given the choice between believing thousands of scientists saying the climate is changing and a few useful idiots shilling for the fossil fuel industry who say it isn't, I'm going to pick the scientists.

  4. Re:Unbelievable by Freischutz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No it doesn't. I can measure climate change, I can observe it and I can feel it's impact on my surroundings.

    Funny, it reminds me of Chris Reimer's video channel audience that is shrinking by the minute. For sure he ain't no god although he likes to think he is somehow.

    A bowl of Pasta can be god if you choose to worship it. That's how religion works.

    So can climate models. That's how religion works.

    Ever notice how when you see the predictions from multiple hurricane projection models, there often is one or two that are utterly different from the consensus of all the other 10-15 models used to predict hurricanes?

    Why don't any of the climate models predictions we see ever do that? They're all really, really close. That's preposterous. How could they ALL BE ABOUT THE SAME?

    That REALLY should be causing a lot of questions to be raised about what process could be forcing all the models to agree.

    But yet you worship the output from those models, and expect the rest of the human race to agree with you and expend trillions of dollars over decades to address YOUR beliefs, to the point of using non-scientific words dripping with emotional content to denounce the disbelievers: DENIALISTS!! You might as well drop the hypocrisy and just call them heretics.

    You got the balls to actually look at your own beliefs critically?

    No I don't, worship has nothing to do with it. You will not find the word worship used anywhere in science except in the study religion and even then only because worship is a central concept in religion. I don't think climate models are an omnipresent entity that only scientists can hear. So far no scientist has delivered to me a message from climate models that only they can hear that instructs me on how to live my life or else the almighty climate models will cast me into hell for an eternity of sadistic torture for refusing to 'believe'. That's how religion works. Climate science, like all science, is a method of procedure that consists of systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses. Nothing in science is taken 'on faith' without any proof like in religion.

  5. Re:Unbelievable by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can see floods. I can see ice bergs melt. I can't see gods.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. Re:Unbelievable by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ramen, brother!

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  7. Re: Deniable, by lying faggots... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I call bullshit on your argument. That's the same logical fault that is used by the anti-vax movement: because there is one "scientist" that published a link between autism and vaccination, the science is not settled. Let's just ignore that this "scientist" had his paper and approbation revoked for gross misconduct.

    The question of "Is the human burning of fossil fuels affecting the world climate?" is settled. There is a small number of nay-Sayers, many with political and financial reasons, but that's completely normal. The on-going debate is only about the precise impact. Much of the projections in research papers is by nature conservative. Not in the political sense, but in the sense of "let's assume the unknown factors compensate as much as reasonable possible for humanities impact". Of course, media likes to quote the most dramatic projection instead, so for the layman it might look like drawing doomsday scenarios. A 50 feet raise of the ocean level doesn't sound that extreme, e.g. if you compare with https://xkcd.com/1225/ Not a scientific source and there is a ~10% difference in density between ice and water, but good enough.

    Some of the big open questions are "Where is all the extra energy going that we do not see?" and "How does the raising ocean temperature affect the ocean and air circulation streams?". The former is difficult to answer because temperature monitoring for the world oceans is spotty at best. It's also an insanely large reservoir of storage capacity for heat, so small temperature changes reflect vast amounts of energy. The latter question is difficult to answer because there are a lot of small scale and large scale interactions all getting mixed up.

    But with all those open questions, the data base is getting better every day and the quality of the models used is improving constantly as well. So far, the actual data has pretty consistently out-paced the conservative predictions for the temperature raise. That should be deeply troubling to everyone...