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Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

New Melt Record for Greenland Ice Sheet

Author:     ELLIS SIMON
Source:     City College of New York
Publication Date:     21-Jan-11
 Link: New Melt Record for Greenland Ice Sheet
Stephan:   You know I like to deal with good data, it is so much more helpful than ideology or willful ignorance. This is a report on the state of the nursery of sea rise, Greenland Island. I have said this many times, let me say it again. I have been studying climate change since 1991, that's 20 years. In all that time the basic premise has never really been in question. The Denier movement arguments dance around the edges, and seem unable or unwilling to distinguish weather from climate. The movement has been politically devastating, but is completely irrelevant to climate processes, except to retard our ability to respond to what is happening. What has changed dramatically in two decades is the collapse of the time line, as databases became more and more refined. Changes originally seen as taking 500 years, became 200 years, became 50 years, and seem to be shrinking again. The planet is changing very quickly.

New research shows that 2010 set new records for the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, expected to be a major contributor to projected sea level rises in coming decades.

‘This past melt season was exceptional, with melting in some areas stretching up to 50 days longer than average,’ said Dr. Marco Tedesco, director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at The City College of New York (CCNY – CUNY), who is leading a project studying variables that affect ice sheet melting.

‘Melting in 2010 started exceptionally early at the end of April and ended quite late in mid- September.’

The study, with different aspects sponsored by World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the National Science Foundation and NASA, examined surface temperature anomalies over the Greenland ice sheet surface, as well as estimates of surface melting from satellite data, ground observations and models.

In an article published today in ‘Environmental Research Letters,’ Professor Tedesco and co-authors note that in 2010, summer temperatures up to 3C above the average were combined with reduced snowfall.

The capital of Greenland, Nuuk, had the warmest spring and summer since records began in 1873.

Bare ice was exposed earlier than the average and longer than previous years, contributing to the extreme record.

‘Bare ice is […]

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