More ice loss from Greenland

[IanC]

Haven't all the glaciers and ice packs been retreating and thinning since the 'Little Ice Age'? What portion of the present retreating and thinning of glaciers and ice packs is due to burning fossil fuels? The AWG folks seem to infer it is all due to manmade factors even though it has been going on for hundred of years, much of it before the wide spread use of oil. Comments anyone?

 

[westwall]

Haven't all the glaciers and ice packs been retreating and thinning since the 'Little Ice Age'? What portion of the present retreating and thinning of glaciers and ice packs is due to burning fossil fuels? The AWG folks seem to infer it is all due to manmade factors even though it has been going on for hundred of years, much of it before the wide spread use of oil. Comments anyone?

Facts make their brains hurt.

 

[Old Rocks]

Haven't all the glaciers and ice packs been retreating and thinning since the 'Little Ice Age'? What portion of the present retreating and thinning of glaciers and ice packs is due to burning fossil fuels? The AWG folks seem to infer it is all due to manmade factors even though it has been going on for hundred of years, much of it before the wide spread use of oil. Comments anyone?

Rate of change.

NASA Finds Warmer Ocean Speeding Greenland Glacier Melt - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

"Our study fills the gap by actually looking at these submarine melt rates, something that had never been done before in Greenland," Rignot said. "The results indicate rather large values that have vast implications for the evolution of the glaciers if ocean waters within these fjords continue to warm."

In recent years, scientists have observed a widespread acceleration of Greenland's glaciers, associated with thinning of their lower reaches as they reach the sea. In the past decade, surface melting of glaciers around Greenland due to warm air temperatures has increased in both magnitude and area, while snowfall has increased just slightly. The result is a tripling in the amount of ice mass lost in Greenland between 1996 and 2007. Of this loss, between 50 and 60 percent is attributable to a speedup in the flow of outlet glaciers, with the remainder due to increased surface melting. But the glaciers also melt along their submerged faces, where they come into contact with warm ocean waters. A warmer ocean erodes a glacier's submerged, grounded ice and causes its grounding line -- the point at which a tidewater glacier floats free of its bed -- to retreat. Little is known about these rates of undersea melting and how they may influence the glaciers. The only previous measurements of undersea glacier melting were in Alaska.

The melting of glaciers beneath the ocean surface causes deep, warm, salty water to be drawn up toward the glacier's face, where it mixes turbulently with the glacier's cold, fresh water. The water then rises along the glacier face, melting its ice along the way, then reaches the ocean surface and flows away from the glacier in a plume. An ocean temperature of 3 degrees Celsius (37.4 degrees Fahrenheit) can melt glacial ice at a rate of several meters per day, or hundreds of meters over the course of a summer.

 

[westwall]

Haven't all the glaciers and ice packs been retreating and thinning since the 'Little Ice Age'? What portion of the present retreating and thinning of glaciers and ice packs is due to burning fossil fuels? The AWG folks seem to infer it is all due to manmade factors even though it has been going on for hundred of years, much of it before the wide spread use of oil. Comments anyone?

Rate of change.

NASA Finds Warmer Ocean Speeding Greenland Glacier Melt - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

"Our study fills the gap by actually looking at these submarine melt rates, something that had never been done before in Greenland," Rignot said. "The results indicate rather large values that have vast implications for the evolution of the glaciers if ocean waters within these fjords continue to warm."

In recent years, scientists have observed a widespread acceleration of Greenland's glaciers, associated with thinning of their lower reaches as they reach the sea. In the past decade, surface melting of glaciers around Greenland due to warm air temperatures has increased in both magnitude and area, while snowfall has increased just slightly. The result is a tripling in the amount of ice mass lost in Greenland between 1996 and 2007. Of this loss, between 50 and 60 percent is attributable to a speedup in the flow of outlet glaciers, with the remainder due to increased surface melting. But the glaciers also melt along their submerged faces, where they come into contact with warm ocean waters. A warmer ocean erodes a glacier's submerged, grounded ice and causes its grounding line -- the point at which a tidewater glacier floats free of its bed -- to retreat. Little is known about these rates of undersea melting and how they may influence the glaciers. The only previous measurements of undersea glacier melting were in Alaska.

The melting of glaciers beneath the ocean surface causes deep, warm, salty water to be drawn up toward the glacier's face, where it mixes turbulently with the glacier's cold, fresh water. The water then rises along the glacier face, melting its ice along the way, then reaches the ocean surface and flows away from the glacier in a plume. An ocean temperature of 3 degrees Celsius (37.4 degrees Fahrenheit) can melt glacial ice at a rate of several meters per day, or hundreds of meters over the course of a summer.

The part that old fraud left off...


"All major Greenland glaciers end up in the ocean, and tidewater glaciers control 90 percent of the ice discharged by Greenland into the sea," Rignot said. "Submarine melting may therefore have a large indirect impact on the ice mass budget of the entire Greenland Ice Sheet. If we are to determine the future of the Greenland Ice Sheet more reliably in a changing climate, more complete and detailed studies of the interactions between ice and ocean at the ice sheet's margins are essential."


Which in essence means that they don't know if any of it is true but if you give them lots of money they can MAYBE figure something out. This is classic con man speak. They can never tell you "if you do this, X will happen" everything is allways maybe. The most useless branch of "science" I've ever seen.

 

[Old Rocks]

Oh my, once again, Walleyes simply forgets about such things as the GRACE satellites.

Accelerated Ice Loss from Greenland : Graphics : Gallery : Climate Central

After little net change in the 1990s, Greenland is now melting and shedding billions of tons of ice, according to NASA satellite observations. This trend especially concerns scientists because meltwater and ice emptying into the ocean raise global sea level. Currently, sea level is increasing at about 1.25 inches per decade, and researchers estimate Greenland is contributing about 15% of this rate. Greenland holds a great deal of ice; if all of it returned to the ocean, sea level would rise about 23 feet. (Such a loss would take many centuries to play out, even with substantially more warming than today.)

Why is Greenland losing ice? It appears linked in several ways to climate warming, which is strongest in the Arctic. First, surface melt of ice on Greenland has been increasing. Second, much of the meltwater drains to the base of glaciers and then lubricates the glaciers’ flow toward the sea. And finally, where the glaciers plunge into the ocean, warmer water appears to be eroding the glacial tongues that help hold flow back.

How do we know Greenland has been losing ice on balance? Data from two satellite missions have independently led to the same conclusion. ICESat has repeatedly measured the elevation profile of the Greenland Ice Sheet in great detail; changes over time, combined with estimates of ice compression and density, have allowed scientists to track changes in mass.Separately, the GRACE mission has provided a direct measure of mass change through time, through its unique “scale in the sky” capabilities, and is the basis for the 2004-2007 average annual loss estimate shown here.1 For years from before ICESat and GRACE, scientists used satellite radar altimetry and aircraft laser measurements to estimate Greenland’s ice mass, arriving at the figures shown here2—essentially no change in the 1990s.

 

[Old Rocks]

NASA - Researchers Witness Overnight Breakup, Retreat of Greenland Glacier

NASA-funded researchers monitoring Greenland's Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier report that a 7 square kilometer (2.7 square mile) section of the glacier broke up on July 6 and 7, as shown in the image above. The calving front – where the ice sheet meets the ocean – retreated nearly 1.5 kilometers (a mile) in one day and is now further inland than at any time previously observed. The chunk of lost ice is roughly one-eighth the size of Manhattan Island, New York.

Research teams led by Ian Howat of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University and Paul Morin, director of the Antarctic Geospatial Information Center at the University of Minnesota have been monitoring satellite images for changes in the Greenland ice sheet and its outlet glaciers. While this week's breakup itself is not unusual, Howat noted, detecting it within hours and at such fine detail is a new phenomenon for scientists.

"While there have been ice breakouts of this magnitude from Jakonbshavn and other glaciers in the past, this event is unusual because it occurs on the heels of a warm winter that saw no sea ice form in the surrounding bay," said Thomas Wagner, cryospheric program scientist at NASA Headquarters. "While the exact relationship between these events is being determined, it lends credence to the theory that warming of the oceans is responsible for the ice loss observed throughout Greenland and Antarctica."

 

[Old Rocks]

NASA's Grace Sees Rapid Spread in Greenland Ice Loss - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

March 25, 2010

A new international study finds that ice losses from Greenland's ice sheet, which have been increasing over the past decade in its southern region, are now spreading rapidly up its northwest coast.

The researchers, including Isabella Velicogna, jointly of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine, compared data from the JPL-built and managed Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) mission with continuous GPS measurements made from long-term sites on bedrock on the ice sheet's edges. The Grace and GPS data gave the researchers monthly averages of crustal uplift caused by ice mass loss. They found that the acceleration in ice loss began moving up the northwest coast of Greenland in late 2005. The authors speculate the dramatic ice mass losses on Greenland's northwest coast are caused by some of the big glaciers in the region sliding downhill faster and dumping more ice into the sea.

"These changes on the Greenland ice sheet are happening fast, and we are definitely losing more mass than we had anticipated," says Velicogna. "We also are seeing this trend in Antarctica, a sign that warming temperatures really are having an effect on ice in Earth's cold regions."

 

[westwall]

Oh my, once again, Walleyes simply forgets about such things as the GRACE satellites.

Accelerated Ice Loss from Greenland : Graphics : Gallery : Climate Central

After little net change in the 1990s, Greenland is now melting and shedding billions of tons of ice, according to NASA satellite observations. This trend especially concerns scientists because meltwater and ice emptying into the ocean raise global sea level. Currently, sea level is increasing at about 1.25 inches per decade, and researchers estimate Greenland is contributing about 15% of this rate. Greenland holds a great deal of ice; if all of it returned to the ocean, sea level would rise about 23 feet. (Such a loss would take many centuries to play out, even with substantially more warming than today.)

Why is Greenland losing ice? It appears linked in several ways to climate warming, which is strongest in the Arctic. First, surface melt of ice on Greenland has been increasing. Second, much of the meltwater drains to the base of glaciers and then lubricates the glaciers’ flow toward the sea. And finally, where the glaciers plunge into the ocean, warmer water appears to be eroding the glacial tongues that help hold flow back.

How do we know Greenland has been losing ice on balance? Data from two satellite missions have independently led to the same conclusion. ICESat has repeatedly measured the elevation profile of the Greenland Ice Sheet in great detail; changes over time, combined with estimates of ice compression and density, have allowed scientists to track changes in mass.Separately, the GRACE mission has provided a direct measure of mass change through time, through its unique “scale in the sky” capabilities, and is the basis for the 2004-2007 average annual loss estimate shown here.1 For years from before ICESat and GRACE, scientists used satellite radar altimetry and aircraft laser measurements to estimate Greenland’s ice mass, arriving at the figures shown here2—essentially no change in the 1990s.

You mean these GRACE satellites that have been found to have some rather interesting biases?

Here is a short report on the peer reviewed study that confirms the issues.

CO2 Science

No I am quite familiar with them, they just need a lot more work on them before they are useful.