Birdnow's Aviary

January 29, 2019

No Unusual Ice Melt in Greenland

Timothy Birdnow

More lies about Greenland and ice loss.

Paul Homewood explains:

Science Daily elaborate on the "faster than 2003â€ claim:

Bevisâ€™ team used data from GRACE and from GPS stations scattered around Greenlandâ€™s coast to identify changes in ice mass. The patterns they found show an alarming trend â€” by 2012, ice was being lost at nearly four times the rate that prevailed in 2003.

Bevis said a natural weather phenomenon â€” the North Atlantic Oscillation, which brings warmer air to West Greenland, as well as clearer skies and more solar radiation â€” was building on man-made climate change to cause unprecedented levels of melting and runoff. Global atmospheric warming enhances summertime melting, especially in the southwest. The North Atlantic Oscillation is a natural â€” if erratic â€” cycle that causes ice to melt under normal circumstances. When combined with man-made global warming, though, the effects are supercharged.

"These oscillations have been happening forever," Bevis said. "So why only now are they causing this massive melt? Itâ€™s because the atmosphere is, at its baseline, warmer. The transient warming driven by the North Atlantic Oscillation was riding on top of more sustained, global warming."

But what happened in 2012?

Due to that weather event, the NAO, Greenland experienced an unusually mild year, with in particular a sunny summer.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/07/01/greenland-temperatures-in-2017/

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the Surface Mass Balance of the Greenland ice sheet shrank slightly, due to both reduced snowfall and ice melt:

http://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/

https://web.archive.org/web/20170831040633/http://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/

However, that was the exception. Last year, for instance, the SMB grew much more than the long term mean, as it did the year before.

Bevisâ€™ claim that ice loss in 2012 was greater than in 2003 is based on one yearâ€™s weather, and not the long term trend.

It is worth emphasising here that the SMB reflects both snowfall and ice melt, but not calving of glaciers. It is, of course, ice melt that Bevis is mainly concerned about here.

As we can see from the above temperature chart for SW Greenland, with the exception of 2012, temperatures since 2003 are little different to the 1920s to 40s, the last time the AMO was in warm phase, as it presently is.

There is simply no evidence at all of Greenlandâ€™s climate getting any warmer over the long term.

As for the lurid threats of multi meter sea level rise, according to DMI loss of ice from the Greenland ice sheet (from all causes) since 2003 has accounted for about 0.65mm a year of global sea level rise, little more than 2 inches per century.

Bevis asks:

"These oscillations have been happening forever. So why only now are they causing this massive melt? "

Because we have only been monitoring the melt for the last decade or two!

We know that global sea level rise was just as great in the early to mid 20thC, and there is therefore no evidence whatsoever that melting of the Greenland ice sheet was not just as great back then.

It's the North Atlantic Oscillation, stupid!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:23 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 510 words, total size 7 kb.

Due to that weather event, the NAO, Greenland experienced an unusually mild year, with in particular a sunny summer.

Posted by: fireboy and watergirl at March 11, 2020 09:08 AM (nh65o)