Question : What is melting this glacier?
A. CO2 from your evil, greedy, thoughtless lifestyle
B. An inch of dark grit and soot on top of the ice
C. Climate change caused by climate change
D. Wildebeest trampling the snow during their migration to Greenland
I posted the following to SkepticalScience today: http://www.skepticalscience.com/himalayan-glaciers-growing.htm. Well see if it passes through moderation. Actually, they tend to post-moderate these days, so it looks to have already posted.
Glaciers hold only 1% of the planet’s ice. Antarctica and Greenland hold the rest, with the greatest amount in glaciers being in the Himalayas.
I don’t know how Cogley [the source of a chart on SS.com that shows a recent surge in glacial melting]weighed his data. That the vast majority of glacial volume is in the Himalayas and that soot is causing more melting there than warming (http://esciencenews.com/articles/2011/03/03/soot.packs.a.punch.tibetan.plateaus.climate) provides additional pause.
A map is here:
http://oi52.tinypic.com/2en6cup.jpg
So, a chart of a sampling of ice loss from glaciers world wide says very little about what to expect from what really matters: temperature or sea level rise. That we are in a temperature peak that I believe to be mostly natural makes loss of loss from tiny glaciers that lack thermal inertia in extremely cold locations in isolated climate zones does not impress me as much as the idea that world sea ice is starting to melt in an actually meaningful manner.
That the IPCC claimed the Himalayas would melt by 2035 means that unless those who allowed such a claim to pass through their peer review process need to go or I have little trust in current claims of impending doom.
Addendum: The 5×5 temperature grids around the Himalayas actually do show hockey stick shapes, adding a whopping 2 degrees since 1990!:
http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/climap.aspx?area=china
http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/climapgr.aspx?statid=N5:25-30N:85-80E
http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/climapgr.aspx?statid=N5:25-30N:90-85E
So no wonder glacial melt is surging. Local heating over the Himalayas. This has been suggested to be due to local land use changes as a sudden 2 degree jump certainly isn’t due to a local spike in CO2. Can I find this warming in a map? Nope! Evidently it must be a very local effect then if it doesn’t show up as a very large super red region above India:
http://i45.tinypic.com/n6szgh.jpg
But boy oh boy look at the extreme *cooling* in Antarctica where 90% of world ice is contained!
How much water would be coming out of the glaciers if they weren’t melting?
This is an excellent answer.
A: CO2!
E. The laser glint from Elvis, back from the dead.
I know the answer is supposed to be A., “CO2”, the cause of all our woes and the evilest gas ever.
However I’m an evil climate denier (yes, I deny the existence of a climate) so I’m going to say B., “soot”
B of course.
D. Wildebeest trampling the snow during their migration to Greenland
I adjusted the parameters in my Super Duper Nintendo sim planet model to allow the Wildebeest to trample the glaciers and when I removed the wildebeests the glaciers remained stable so it could only be the Wildebeests that are the primary drivers of ice loss in the glaciers.
E) – all of the above
Question : What is melting this glacier?
The answer is E. The sun. Slightly warmer air has little effect due to its low heat content.. If it IS an inch of grit & soot it’ll insulate the surface, rather than induce melting. Fine dust or soot transmits heat if less than about 1cm thickness, insulates if greater, due to the included air. Larger particles tend to heat until a greater thickness of cover is attained
Obviously, “D” is the correct answer.