Greenland’s Melting Ice Sheet
The circulation of high pressure air, or “heat dome,” that toasted Europe in the past couple of weeks is now hovered over Greenland, the home of the planet’s most important sheet. How important? Its melting, if completed, would result in sea levels that are 23 feet higher than today’s, meaning that all our coastal cities would cease to exist.
These events in Greenland are the single most important melting event ever recorded. The Independent reports: The current level of melting is a symptom of global climate change, said Dr Ryan Neely of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, a research centre in Leeds. He said conditions at the Summit observation station at the top of Greenland’s ice sheet “have been the most extreme we have ever observed”.
Elsewhere in climate news, there is good news: Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, running for U.S. president in 2020, promises to make climate change mitigation America’s number one priority, and points out that this will bring with it more than 8 million good, union jobs. Correspondingly, there is bad news: he’s more likely to be eaten by a giant frog than be elected president.
Craig,
It’s nice to see your sense of humour returning. (giant frog).
The event over Greenland may not be as laden with doom as you fear.
For millennia Greenland had large scale ice free spring and summer melts, with no discernible rise in sea levels. The original name for Iceland was Vineland, as the original Nordic settlers could grow crops unable to grow in Scandinavia.
The advent of the Medieval mini-Ice Age created a totally different climate eliminating habitation of Greenland. During that time the Thames river in London froze over in winter allowing large scale recreational activity.
The oceans have proved remarkably resilient when it comes to dealing with greater of lesser volumes of water without affecting sea levels. Very few studies are included in climate change modelling regarding seabed behaviour or even the behaviour of volumic increases in oceanic capacity.
The assumption by most scientists seems to be astonishingly simplistic. The popular “consensus” treats the ocean as a sort of bath tub, with fixed and well determined dynamics.
But these are assumptions and assertions, not facts. The problem with many advocates and climate watchers is seeing and interpreting all weather phenomenon through the prism of established theories and assumptions.
Every event therefore confirms the theory, while anomalies are ignored and not researched for fear of disrupting “consensus”
Craig,
If you haven’t seen this,
https://media.mnn.com/assets/images/2013/07/np.jpg.653x0_q80_crop-smart.jpg?fbclid=IwAR0WzPfh6xue3mw5F1jUVHGVy7GePDEQJbT3ILmg4F4_Afj1AE9hGVqD1r8
Then you should.
🙁
It’s a melt-pond. Not yet the BOE.
But it’s still horrifying.
BOE? Beginning of the End?
Blue Ocean Event.
It will be the first time in God only knows how long that there will be no ice throughout the Arctic Basin, only blue ocean.
The picture I linked to is from the North Pole observatory… That’s the North Pole. Right now it’s under a ~20 cm of water, then <3 meters of ice. But within the next few years there will be a few hours in September that will see no floating ice in the Arctic Basin. That's the largest tipping point in climate change BY FAR that we will have experienced, and it will be the largest for another couple of decades. It's a paradigm shift that we are certain to go through, and we will go through it very soon.
Ha! I jut twigged on that. Thanks.
Yes, all this is becoming clearer with each passing month.
Craig,
While I make it a point not to read his endless bile, when I read for your reply I noticed that your idiot troll chimed in on this, and glimpsed the first sentence of his post:
“We’ve been waiting for decades”…
The median predicted time frame for the BOE in the 2007 IPCC report was 2041. The most extreme outlier model, as of 2010, had the first occurrence at 2017, the next most extreme outlier that year had it at 2019, and the next at 2022.
The models have all dialed back rather quickly over the last decade, and now the median shows the first occurrence in the mid-2020’s.
So any bloviating halfwit that claims “we’ve been waiting forever for this” is exposing himself as a complete moron who has never read a single piece of information on this issue.
It’s also worth noting that the transition IS the tipping point. You won’t be able to point specifically to a few minutes in September one year and say: “There, that’s when it all changed.”
We are in the middle of this giant tipping point now, and it will continue transitioning through the tipping point for some time.
Glenn,
Abuse isn’t really a substitute for rational argument, no matter how much you double down on the epithets!
I think you sum up your integrity and rationality when you admit ” I only glimpsed the first sentence of his post”, yet feel quite qualified from this ‘glimpse’ to launch into an indignant tirade of abuse.
Never mind the nature of the planet, evidently your “tipping point” is so volatile perhaps you should seek some sort of reflection on the nature of how you communicate with your fellow human beings ?
Craig,
Each decade we wait for the predicted BOE, yet deadline after deadline passes and it never transpires.
Actually God, oceanographers, historians and geologists can estimate the last time the summer melt of Arctic ice provided a fabled “Northwest passage”.
Like most fables no written records exist but there is a sold base of evidence to suggest that prior to the “little ice age” of AD1300-1850, the summer melts often were sufficient to provide in some years a navigable passage. many Nordic tales allude to such a passage.
During the early early and middle Holocene (approx 6000–10,000 years ago)the summer melt was much larger than present. This Northern hemisphere Early Holocene Insolation Maximum is attributed to Earth’s orbital cycle.
Studies of papers and reports by scientists such as Stranne, C., Jakobsson, M., Bjork, G. suggest the GRIP ice cores and high latitude North Atlantic sediment cores reveal the Bølling–Allerød period (c. 12,700–14,700 years BP) was a climatically unstable period in the northern high latitudes.
They concluded such phenomenon may be linked to dual stability modes of the Arctic sea ice cover characterized by transitions between periods with and without perennial sea ice cover.
It would appear the Planet has gone trough periods of Arctic Ice melt in quite recent history with no discernible harmful effects. Polar bears flourished as did seals. Humans without protective solar panels somehow spread far and wide, and generally flourished.
Nor is there any record of dramatically high sea levels during that period.
It’s important to remember that the 19th and 20th centuries are a very small measure in the world’s climate cycles. The idea of an ‘optimum’ climate to stabilized is inconsistent with the planet history or natural order.
The “great summer” that ended the great Ice Age was the result of Planetary alignment. The hot northern summers melted the great ice caps of North America and Eurasia, exposing darker land and sea to absorb more sunlight and warm the whole planet.
The effect was enormous! Approximately 50 watts per square metre was added 80 degrees North in June/July most years.
Measured against the even the most dire alarmist claims of (global) 3.5 watts per square metre regarding man made global warming by the end of this century, it would appear any claims of ‘BOE’ seem wildly exaggerated .
This period saw the invention of agriculture in seven different parts of the globe simultaneously. Copper smelting began, cattle and sheep were domesticated, wine and cheese were developed, civilization, towns and cities emerged. The climate was generally so wet the Sahara had rivers and forests, hippos and people.
The point I’m making is we are not all doomed if the planet’s climate changes. The idea of a static climate is a creation of the last 200 years. When my ancestors arrived in England from Normandy in 1066, about 2000–3000 Viking settlers had been living in Greenland for more than 80 years. Wine was still produced in parts of England.
In 1095 an ancestor of mine was given a large Winery and vineyard in Nene Valley, Northamptonshire by King William in return for his help in suppressing a rebellion. The Vineyard and Winery were later sold, fortunately before Viticulture became impossible 50 years later.
Geological evidence from Wales suggest that only 7000 years ago several animals normal associated with much warmer climates roamed the seas and land. The Romans grew wine grapes in Britain during the first century, yet the recent re-emergence of wine growing in Kent is taken as overwhelming evidence of man made global warming.
None of the above is intended as an argument in favour of ignoring the impact of pollution and emissions, but merely pointing out that doom laden “beginning of the end” type alarmist rhetoric based on the idea that humans can control the planet’s climate and ensure a permanent static temperature range, is unrealistic and only breeds complacency and doubt.
There’s good evidence that even in a warmer climate, Islands don’t disappear (they may even grow). Nor is there any evicence of major sea level rises. The ocean bed is not like a bath tub, and ocean dynamics largely remain a mystery.