1816 Shock News : 18,000 Square Miles Of Ice Broke Away From Greenland

8 Responses to 1816 Shock News : 18,000 Square Miles Of Ice Broke Away From Greenland

1. stewart pid says:

   July 9, 2013 at 6:32 pm

   Dang … I didn’t know they had blow torches in 1271!! How much do you want to bet it was Reggie’s great grand daddy running that bad boy.

   Reply
   • miked1947 says:

     July 9, 2013 at 6:39 pm

     I would not bet against that one! 🙂

     Reply
2. DSC says:

   July 9, 2013 at 6:47 pm

   If sensational headlines drive traffic then Drudge could have a sensational catastrophic climate disruption headline every day using the historical news you have collected. He might even catch some of the pseudo journalist quoting a headline without reading the article to find out it was some event in the past. But a headline of “18,000 square miles of ice breaking away from Greenland” would get lots of views.

   Reply
3. TomC says:

   July 9, 2013 at 7:01 pm

   It’s very likely a similar event occurred in the early 1880’s but trying to find research on this event is rather hard.
   But if you look at ship reports southeast of Newfoundland from the early 1880’s there were hundreds of massive MASSIVE tabletop icebergs documented and large fields of sea-ice surrounding these bergs (likely from the freshwater content of the immediate surrounding ocean). This many large bergs do not come from glacial calving, even on a massive scale. Sometime in the early 1880’s there must’ve been an ice sheet collapse on a rather large scale somewhere in northern Baffin Bay.

   Steve, perhaps you’ll have more luck finding info on this…

   Reply
4. TomC says:

   July 9, 2013 at 7:24 pm

   I should modify that comment to ice shelf, not ice sheet.

   Reply
5. Jimbo says:

   July 9, 2013 at 7:25 pm

   If only we had satellites back in the 1920s and 1930s

   Abstract
   The Early Twentieth-Century Warming in the Arctic—A Possible Mechanism

   The huge warming of the Arctic that started in the early 1920s and lasted for almost two decades is one of the most spectacular climate events of the twentieth century. During the peak period 1930–40, the annually averaged temperature anomaly for the area 60°–90°N amounted to some 1.7°C…..
   dx.doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(2004)017%3C4045:TETWIT%3E2.0.CO;2

   Abstract
   The regime shift of the 1920s and 1930s in the North Atlantic

   During the 1920s and 1930s, there was a dramatic warming of the northern North Atlantic Ocean. Warmer-than-normal sea temperatures, reduced sea ice conditions and enhanced Atlantic inflow in northern regions continued through to the 1950s and 1960s, with the timing of the decline to colder temperatures varying with location. Ecosystem changes associated with the warm period included a general northward movement of fish. Boreal species of fish such as cod, haddock and herring expanded farther north while colder-water species such as capelin and polar cod retreated northward. The maximum recorded movement involved cod, which spread approximately 1200 km northward along West Greenland……
   dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2006.02.011

   Reply
6. forgottenman2013 says:

   July 9, 2013 at 7:37 pm

   Reblogged this on The Firewall.

   Reply
7. gator69 says:

   July 9, 2013 at 9:43 pm

   Some good friends of mine had an American Eskimo that also got excited about ice. And he was a pain in the ass too.

   Reply