Long-forgotten aerial photographs of Greenland from the 1930s, rediscovered in a castle outside Copenhagen, have allowed researchers to construct a history of glacier retreat and advance in the area.
Most studies of Greenland’s glaciers have been done only since imaging satellites became available in the 1970s, so the data are relatively short-term. But using photographs from 1930s aerial surveys of the southeast coast of Greenland, together with US military aerial shots from the Second World War and recent satellite images, Bjørk and his colleagues have been able to observe changes at high spatial resolution from a period in which few glacier measurements were previously available.
Analysis of the images reveals that over the past decade, glacier retreat was as vigorous as in a similar period of warming in the 1930s
In other words, glacial cycles in Greenland have nothing to do with your SUV.
Left: 1972 image taken by Landsat 1; right, 2010 image taken by Landsat 7, the most recent Landsat satellite.
Rediscovered photos reveal Greenland’s glacier history : Nature News & Comment
h/t to Marc Morano
oh the horror! Actual evidence
Me thinks from recent publications that Nature is doing an undercover, silent “retreat” from the AGW scam. Of course none of the guys involved in this will be booted out or fired etc but will slowly fade away, except of course Mann and probably Jones and BRiffa.
If only today’s consensus scientists had been around in the 1930s to sound the panic alarm that the Earth had a fever and that we would all be boiled to death from the rising hot waters of melting glaciers by the year 2000, they could have saved their grandchildren. 🙂
They have jettisoned Climate Change into Nature Climate Change so they can let that sink silently or even better, sell it to Richard Branson or James Cameron. An attempt at saving the mothership.
At least in the 1930’s there was a real fever, as thousands of records from that decade still stand.
I think the marine navigation records of Arctic Ice also published out of Copenhagen and Soviet Arctic exploration during the ice extent lows of the late 1930’s also verify this picture.
Excellent article.
And just in case any pedant turns up demanding peer-reviewed papers on just about anything on this blog (but not soccer) they can be found at –
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
When this whole climate-scare thing is done-and-dusted, and we look can look back on it at leisure. Will any of the CAGW Team’s claims turn out to have been true? Or will they be remembered as complete and utter liars from start-to-finish?
I believe it will be looked upon as the biggest fraud in history.
IIRC someone in the Blogosphere has already very presciently previously stated it’s the greatest fraud since Piltdown Man..
That may have been me
Junk science… It’s not like it’s unique. 80-90 of published scientific papers pretty much fall into that category, sadly. Very few papers rise to the top and get heavily cited for sound technical reasons.
Another favourite CAGW Team claim looks to be in serious jeopardy. When this whole climate-scare thing is done-and-dusted, and we look can look back on it at leisure. Will any of the CAGW Team’s claims turn out to have been true? Or will they be remembered as complete and utter liars from start-to-finish?
Why did you mirror the whole Nature report except the last sentence that states how the retreat now differs from that of the 1930s?
Greenland is having their coldest year in decades and the coastal regions are still snow covered. Why don’t you move there and see if you can find any cherries to pick for your sustenance. If not, you can eat straw men.
What’s wrong with answering the question?
OK, I’ll bite
“However, whereas glaciers that spill into the ocean retreated rapidly in the 2000s, it was land-terminating glaciers that underwent the fastest regression 80 years ago.”
Since the glacier melt from the 1930s was from land terminating glaciers, where was the massive sea level rise?
In a period of melt, all ocean terminating glaciers become land terminating glaciers eventually.
In a period of freeze, all land terminating glacier eventually grow into the sea.
So why do you think Steve left out the last sentence from the last paragraph?
melting ice is so different now!