Greenland ice sheet melted at unprecedented rate during July | Environment | guardian.co.uk
NASA simply can`t turn off the BS. Here is the actual satellite photo from July 12 – no indication of melt in the interior
Here is the same photo from July 7 – looks identical
Below is the Summit webcam on July 9, at -19C This was supposed to be right in the middle of the NASA big melt.
Where is the big melt, NASA? temperatures got barely above freezing for a few hours, and NASA declares a meltdown
When I heard this reported on BBC Radio 4 this morning, it sounded alarming, as the impression was given that most of the ice on Greenland had melted.
Being of a naturally sceptical nature myself, I reserved judgement until I had more details, and it is now apparent that this was only referring to “melting over the SURFACE of the ice sheet. However, the general listener, who didn’t have the time or the inclination to check the details, may still have been left with the impression that all of the ice had Greenland had suddenly melted. I suspect that those reporting it on the BBC themselves may not have been fully aware of the facts.
I believe that the images shown in The Guardian article are themselves misleading, in that they show the “unmelted” ice sheet in white and that with surface melting in pink, without really explaining the difference. Again, the this may lead the casual reader to think that all of the ice had melted. It is possible to find more details by linking to the NASA website, but how many people will do that? Also, the phrase “recorded history” might be misleading, when this probably means satellite history. The article goes on to say that similar melting occurs about every 150 years, so in that sense it isn’t unprecedented, and the main concern seems to be that this is happening more frequently.
At the same time, the two photographs which you show, and say look identical and show no indication of melting, in fact are not identical and I wouldn’t expect them to show any indication of surface melting. However, they do contradict the general impression given by the the Guardian and BBC reports.
Hi Ray,
Hi Ray,
I share your crtitique of Stevens comparing two Greenland pictures in the visible range to detect surface melt. Once I thought Steven could do better; meanwhile I doubt this.
What happened obviously was SURFACE melt allover in Greenland (o.k. 97% of it) . This is remarkable since the summit station is above 10500 ft a.s.l, a hight I wouldn’t expect temperatures above melting point so far north. What is melting in the summit area (and in most of the elevated areas of Greenland) are parts of last season’s snow TOP LYAER. The melt water percolates into the snowpack and refreezes there. Thus you hardly can see any melt on the picture. It is not that easy to distinguish between slushy and dry snow on a webcam or al sat picture in the visible area, isn’t it. And yet Steven is showing a summit picture asking “”Where is the big melt, NASA”.
This now is for Steven: Where is the beef? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug75diEyiA0
Still what NASA stated (see the picture text in the press release) was: there was “extreme surface melt over the Greenland ice sheet”. The following text of the prees release was not well written at all. And it still was far better with more information than Steven’s collection of Greenland ice sheet posts.
NASA is making a mountain out of a quark. Temperatures get to near 0C every summer at Summit. What a load of BS.
Scuse my ignorance but how do you get surface melt at -19C?
Did you make up your moniker to sound authoritative?
If you don’t expect it to reach 0C at 10,500ft at Summit Camp why don’t you take a look at some of their weather records?
Let me know when you’ve found two July temperatures in the recent past within 2C of 0C.
If the UK has colder days as normal because of cold air from Greenland than Greenland can have warmer as normal days from warmer air coming from the south. The UK is not producing cold air in summer it has to come from an other place . The UK can also be hot in summer and again not because it is producing that weather .
http://policlimate.com/weather/current/gfs_dyntrop_nh.html
http://policlimate.com/weather/current/gfs_dyntrop_sh.html
Greenland can only melt if the normal is always warmer not because of 2days of ‘warmer’ weather.
I don’t see a warmer than normal summer .
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
I do see a warmer than normal winter. But who remembers winter when it’s summer. Just ask the people in some parts of Europe where they were buried in the snow.
Steven,
your comment on the two sat pics in the visible area:
“Here is the same photo from July 7 – looks identical”
When is your next appointment with your optometrist?
;-))
You have to be a total moron to believe that a mile or two thick layer of ice could melt even .01% from a couple hours of temps barely above freezing.
To be fair, I think that Stephen was trying to contradict the “impression” given by the two NASA images and the Guardian and BBC reports, that most of the ice on Greenland had melted in a few days.
Someone has to put forward the opposite viewpoint to correct that impression.
I was half asleep when I heard the BBC report, so I am going to listen to it again, to see if it was as misleading as my first impression.
When anything is measured by NASA, it develops new physical properties, usually after a few years. This one is strangely active.
Just goes to show that NASA, among other government agencies are propaganda machines for the pro-AGW argument, and will cherry pick any area of the globe that fits their criteria of CAGW. They forget to mention the extreme cold in Antarctica, the fact that it has been well below average for almost the entire winter there, or the fact the scandinavia is having one of its coldest summers on record.
Reblogged this on SERMERSUAQ.
The only thing melting down is NASA
So who you gonna believe NASA or your own eyes ? Better run right out and buy land in Greenland and grow stuff . Oh wait , didn’t the vikings try that ? They even hung on for a couple of hundred years too. How could that be if this melt is unprecedented ? More BS from the idiots at NASA. Hey mfkboulder , what are you a coward , afraid to post under your real name ? I notice the detracters never put their real names up as someone might know them . When you see the name johnmcguire that is a real name and a person who lives 26 miles east of portland oregon . A farmer type guy who isn’t ashamed of his opinions .
Are those rubber ducks still popping out?
Not sure how you can tell how much melt there is from a satellite photo, perhaps your eyes are better than mine Steve.
Andy
McKibben claimed that the albedo dropped to zero. when in fact it is closer to 1.0. You don’t need great eyes to see that.
Agree, currently it is hard to know how much spin the media are putting on it. They are a bit like a dog with a bone that soon gets tired and goes onto the next more juicy bone.
Andy
Where did McKibben claim that albedo had dropped to zero?
The tweet I saw said that reflectivity had “literally dropped off the bottom of the chart”. “Literally”, what that meant would depend upon which chart he was referring to, but could have been 65%. Low, but not zero. So if he “literally” did say “zero”, I would appreciate a source.
The albedo is close to 1.0 Do you also argue about angels dancing on the head of pins?
Where was that?
I never believe anything that NASA says any longer until I check it out and verify they aren’t lying as is the norm for them these days. In the glory days of putting men on the moon NASA was doing real science. Now NASA can’t even put men into orbit. NASA has become a political organization that caters to the political left and their agenda. Defund the organization and start a new one, one staffed with people who aren’t beholding to political masters in the White House.
The people at NASA should be ashamed of themselves for the Greenland is melting hysteria and a whole lot more that’s too numerous to mention here. At one time a grand organization that has now whored itself out for political expediency.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/24/opinion/lubchenco-climate/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7
The period between July 2011 and June 2012 was the hottest 12 months on record.
Doesn’t sound right at all… Anyone know what dataset would produce this? I wonder what the real answer is.
One dataset that comes to mind to produce that kind of result would be GISS, headed by James Hansen
They are referring to US temperatures and that may or may not be correct.
Precisely. US temperatures very similar to the pattern that was experienced in the US during the period from 1934 to 1936. And back then of course, the technology for making precise measurements of temperature was not nearly as sophisticated as today, as there were no satellites then, for but one example. So in effect, it is very possible that period in the 1930s was actually hotter than today.
Ok, I see, but even if it’s not GISS, it’s very likely that the temperatures were adjusted and manipulated to create a warming trend.
According to WUWT, Lora Koenig also said that the current ice melt was “right on time”, based on a period of 150 years, since the last one happened in 1889. Actually that’s only about 120 years, but it’s strange that this bit wasn’t quoted in the Guardian article.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/24/greenland-ice-melt-every-150-years-is-right-on-time/
The NASA press release F**ed it up too. Why would we expect the Guardian to do better?
“The albedo is close to 1.0 Do you also argue about angels dancing on the head of pins?”
If by that you mean do I think it is best to stick to the facts, then yes.
None of the graphs have ever shown 100% albedo, or indeed over about 92%.
There is no visible change to the albedo before during or after.
Just overflew Greenland on the way to Hong Knong from New York. It was -55 F at 31,000 feet. Above freezing at 10,000 feet? I don’t this type of lapse rate is physically posssible, and if it were, I doubt we would have flown through it.
Just a crude estimate :
7000 m Tdiff -50 deg C makes a laps rate of .7 deg C per 100m .nothing wrong with that!
Hello: nice discussion, guys… and concerning T_air vs altitude this may help…
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/atmos.html
(ooopss… sorry, it’s from NASA!… 🙂 )
Roberto
Wait! It’s getting better!! ABC News’ morning weatherman talked about the Greenland “melt” today. He said this had never happened before!!!
Did the other Al (Roker) say that?
NASA’s fear-mongering press release headline and lie:
“Satellites See *Unprecedented* Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt”
The inconvenient (and CO2 doomsday cult unapproved) truth:
“Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time,” said Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and member of the research team analyzing the satellite data.
You could say that that the Arctic sea ice is a good indication of how Greenland will go. Greenland ice cap is pretty thick compared to Arctic sea ice, so you would expect Arctic sea ice to show any evidence of more melting first.
Is it?
Andy
There is less sea ice in the Arctic than there was in January.
When is NASA going to fess up to the fact that albedo in the ablation zone (0-500m altitude) is unusually high this year (only beaten by 2001 and 2006)?
I believe the French chemist Berthelot recognized that water must have a substantial heat of fusion, for otherwise, “every Thing would be flooded by a Spring thaw of snow when temperatures rose above the freezing point of water.”
Imbecile NASA recognizes nothing of the sort. According to NASA, two days of 2 deg.C temperatures = about 50 cubic miles of melted snow
It is so brane ded I can’t look at it
More like four hours.
What does it tell you about the Warmist movement when they are now down to hyping weather events that last hours or days?
Yep, these people know they’ve been discovered and resorted to even more desperate tactics. Slowly but surely the skeptical argument is winning, but we still have a long ways to go. Just wait until this winter comes, they’re not going to be able to hide from that cold, but I’m sure they’ll make up an excuse. If we get the forecasted pattern reversal this winter, it could be yet another cold winter in the last several years, and the public will further question their alarmism and will wonder where the AGW went. Add this to the fact, that according to Joe Bastardi, we’ll see a major temperature crash globally, and it will be harder to perpetuate the AGW argument, but they are desperate and will come up with some BS to keep the AGW lie alive.
Larry’s comment: The land of central Greenland is below sea level. Greenland can be described as a glacial atoll. If all of that ice had magically melted, as NASA strongly suggests, the satellite photo would show a lot of water there, instead of land!
The land is depressed several thousand feet because of the weight of the glaciers on it. As the glaciers melted, the land would pop back up.
Yes, but if the all of that melting had happened during a few hours or a few days, as NASA strongly suggests, the rebound would take a lot longer than that.
NASA is going to have some more dirt thrown at them, when it is revealed the snow is still there.
Last bogus NASA press release came from their mixing September in October Russian weather data two years ago.
Of course it will mean nothing to Dumbocrats, but just another example of NASA never checking anything. NASA has become a laughing stock
I remember when NASA used to do science 🙁 They took us to the moon, and now they have to beg for money. Jesus.
WASTE money you mean. Twice they couldn’t figure out that the pressure would be too high on a fairing to release a satellite when the rocket was supersonic
Your comment puzzles me. Surely if the l.v. was outside the atmosphere, there would be no pressure on the fairing.
Can you supply more details?
Hey, looks like this story got some press on FOX News, good job to Steven and Anthony Watts!! Finally the skeptics get the press they deserve!! Hopefully, the public begins to understand the BS coming from the AGW crowd.