Snubbed

By Bill Bramhall 

I'm taking Greenland next

 By Cathy Wilcox, Ozzie cartoonist

Annexing Greenland instead

 By Drew Sheneman

Just to spite him

 By Guy Venables

Lebensraum

Via Marc Wing

“Lebensraum” by Niels Bo Bojesen via Steve Brodner on Bluesky and on The Greater Quiet, his Substack. Please support the work of Editorial Cartoonists, whenever possible directly, whose work is shown on Bluesky. This #EditorialCartoon was found HERE on The Greater Quiet.

 

Not for sale; Vacant for rent

 by Adam Zyglis

Greenland melt punching off the charts

 From a tweet by Professor Jason Box

Greenland melt punching off the charts

Yet still we subsidise fossil fuels.  Still we do too little to slash emissions.  Still the Right are wall-to-wall denialists.  

Accelerated melt of ice sheets now unmistakable

From The BBC

If you could shape an ice cube out of all the ice losses from Greenland and Antarctica over the past three decades, it would stand 20km high.

An international group of scientists who work with satellite data say the acceleration in the melting of Earth's ice sheets is now unmistakable.

They calculate the planet's frozen poles lost 7,560 billion tonnes in mass between 1992 and 2022.

Seven of the worst melting years have occurred in the past decade.

Mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica is now responsible for a quarter of all sea-level rise.

This contribution is five times what it was 30 years ago.

The latest assessment comes from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise, or Imbie.

This project, which is supported by the US and European space agencies, issues regular reviews of the state of the planet's ice sheets.

This is the third such report, and like the previous studies, it has collated and reviewed all available satellite measurements.

It includes the observations from orbit of some 50 spacecraft missions from 1992. That particular year was when orbiting instruments best suited to studying the elevation and velocity of ice started overflying the poles routinely.

The 7,560 billion tonnes of ice lost from Greenland and Antarctica during the study period pushed up sea-levels by 21mm.

Almost two-thirds (13.5mm) of this was due to melting in Greenland; one-third (7.4mm) was the result of melting in Antarctica.

"All this has profound implications for coastal communities around the world and their risk of being exposed to flooding and erosion," said Dr Inès Otosaka from the UK's Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM), who led the latest assessment.

"It's really important that we have robust estimates for the future contribution to sea-level rise from the ice sheets so that we can go to these communities and say, 'Yes, we understand what is happening and we can now start to plan mitigations'," she told BBC News.

Warmer air is melting the top of the Greenland Ice Sheet (NASA/GODDARD/MARIA-JOSÉ VIÑAS)

Greenland warmer now than in the last 1000 years

An aerial view of meltwater on the Russell Glacier in Greenland on Aug. 16, 2022. Photo: Lukasz Larsson Warzecha/Getty Images

From Axios


Northern and central Greenland were warmer in the early 21st century compared to any period in at least the past 1,000 years, a new study found.

The new research offers the first conclusive evidence of human-induced long-term warming and increased meltwater runoff in the northern and central parts of Greenland, typically the coldest parts of the ice sheet.How much and how fast the ice sheet melts will help determine the fate of coastal residents worldwide, given its contribution to sea level rise.


The study, published in the journal Nature, finds that the warming during 2000-2011 exceeded the peak from swings in temperatures during pre-industrial times “with virtual certainty," and is about 1.5°C warmer than it was during the twentieth century.The likelihood that such temperatures would occur during the period from 1000-1800 is “close to zero,” the paper states.

The researchers worked to overcome a large amount of natural climate variability in the region by obtaining as many high quality ice core and other climate records as possible.

“Global warming is now detectable in one of the most remote regions of the world,” the study states.The reconstructed history of meltwater flowing off the ice sheet shows a spike during the 2000-2011 period that is unprecedented for the past millennium, a trend it predicts will continue, though with less certainty than the temperature conclusions.

“I hope this is a reminder for everyone that we should be worried, very worried about the Greenland ice sheet melting away,” Eric Rignot of UC Irvine and a senior researcher at NASA, who was not involved in the study, told Axios via email.

Ian Joughin, a climate scientist at the University of Washington, who also not involved in the new work, said the study offers valuable new data. “Greenland is warming with a clear linear trend, which likely will steepen with time,” he said.

Joughin cautioned that natural variability in the region means future decades could see lower amounts of warming and melting, at least temporarily.

Greenland's glaciers melting 100 times faster than we thought

In this aerial view, icebergs and meltwater are seen in front of the retreating Russell Glacier on Sept. 8, 2021 near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. (Image credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

From LiveScience

Scientists are getting a better handle on how fast Greenland's ice is flowing out to sea. Old models that used Antarctica as a baseline were way off the mark.

Greenland's glaciers are melting 100 times faster than previously calculated, according to a new model that takes into account the unique interaction between ice and water at the island’s fjords.

The new mathematical representation of glacial melt factors in the latest observations of how ice gets eaten away from the stark vertical faces at the ends of glaciers in GGreenland. Previously, scientists used models developed in Antarctica, where glacial tongues float on top of seawater — a very different arrangement.

"For years, people took the melt rate model for Antarctic floating glaciers and applied it to Greenland's vertical glacier fronts," lead author Kirstin Schulz, a research associate in the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at University of Texas at Austin, said in a statement. "But there is more and more evidence that the traditional approach produces too low melt rates at Greenland's vertical glacier fronts."

The researchers published their findings in September in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Researchers already knew their Antarctica-based understanding of Arctic glaciers was not a perfect match. But it's hard to get close to the edges of Greenland's glaciers, because they're situated at the ends of fjords — long, narrow inlets of seawater flanked by high cliffs — where warm water undercuts the ice. This leads to dramatic calving events where chunks of ice the size of buildings crumble into the water with little warning, creating mini-tsunamis, according to the researchers.

Researchers led by physical oceanographer Rebecca Jackson of Rutgers University have been using robotic boats to get close to these dangerous ice cliffs and take measurements. They've done this at Alaska's LeConte Glacier as well as Greenland's Kangerlussuup Sermia. (An upcoming mission led by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin will send robotic subs to the faces of three west Greenland glaciers.) Jackon's measurements suggest that the Antarctica-based models massively underestimate Arctic glacial melt. LeConte, for example, is disappearing 100 times faster than models predicted.

The mixture of cold fresh water from the glaciers and warmer seawater drives ocean circulation near the glaciers and farther out in the ocean, meaning the melt has far-reaching implications. The Greenland ice sheet is also important for sea-level rise; Greenland ice holds enough water to raise sea levels by 20 feet (6 meters).

The new model uses the latest data from near-glacial missions along with a more realistic understanding of how the steep, cliff-like faces of the glaciers impact ice loss. The results are consistent with Jackson's findings, showing 100 times more melt than the old models predicted.

"Ocean climate model results are highly relevant for humankind to predict trends associated with climate change, so you really want to get them right," Schulz said. "This was a very important step for making climate models better."

Major sea-level rise inevitable

From The Guardian

Major sea-level rise from the melting of the Greenland ice cap is now inevitable, scientists have found, even if the fossil fuel burning that is driving the climate crisis were to end overnight.

The research shows the global heating to date will cause an absolute minimum sea-level rise of 27cm (10.6in) from Greenland alone as 110tn tonnes of ice melt. With continued carbon emissions, the melting of other ice caps and thermal expansion of the ocean, a multi-metre sea-level rise appears likely.


Billions of people live in coastal regions, making flooding due to rising sea levels one of the greatest long-term impacts of the climate crisis. If Greenland’s record melt year of 2012 becomes a routine occurrence later this century, as is possible, then the ice cap will deliver a “staggering” 78cm of sea-level rise, the scientists said.

Previous studies have used computer models of ice cap behaviour to estimate future losses, but the physical processes are complex and this leads to significant uncertainties in the results.

In contrast, the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change used satellite measurements of ice losses from Greenland and the shape of the ice cap from 2000-19. This data enabled the scientists to calculate how far global heating to date has pushed the ice sheet from an equilibrium where snowfall matches the ice lost. This allowed the calculation of how much more ice must be lost in order to regain stability.

“It is a very conservative rock-bottom minimum,” said Prof Jason Box from the National Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (Geus), who led the research. “Realistically, we will see this figure more than double within this century.”

The 27cm estimate is a minimum because it only accounts for global heating so far and because some ways in which glacier ice is lost at the margins of the ice sheet are not included.

The advantage of this study is that it provides a solid estimate of inevitable sea-level rise but the method used does not give a timescale over which the ice will be lost. Nonetheless, based on scientists’ overall understanding of how sheets such as Greenland lose ice into the ocean, the researchers said most of the rise would occur relatively soon. In 2021, other scientists warned that a significant part of the Greenland ice sheet was on the brink of a tipping point.

“The minimum of 27cm is the sea-level rise deficit that we have accrued to date and it’s going to get paid out, no matter what we do going forward,” said Dr William Colgan, also at Geus. “Whether it’s coming in 100 years or 150 years, it’s coming. And the sea-level rise we are committed to is growing at present, because of the climate trajectory we’re on.”

Colgan said: “If [2012] becomes a normal year, then the committed loss grows to 78cm, which is staggering, and the fact that we’re already flickering into that range [of ice loss] is shocking. But the difference between 78cm and 27cm highlights the [difference] that can be made through implementing the Paris agreement. There is still a lot of room to minimise the damage.”

Meltwater flows from the ice sheet into the Baffin Bay near Pituffik in northern Greenland. Photograph: Kerem Yücel/AFP/Getty Images

Greenland's ice melting rapidly from below

 

In this July 19, 2011 file photo, pools of melted ice form atop Jakobshavn Glacier, near the edge of the vast Greenland ice sheet. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

From CTVNews.

The ice sheet covering Greenland is melting rapidly at its base and is injecting far more water and ice into the ocean than previously understood, according to new research, which could have serious ramifications for global sea level rise.

"Unprecedented" rates of melting have been observed at the bottom of the ice sheet, caused by huge quantities of meltwater falling down from the surface, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As the meltwater falls, its gravitational potential energy is converted to kinetic energy, which ultimately warms the water as it pools at the base of the ice sheet. In that process, the study found that the Greenland ice sheet produces more energy than the world's 10 largest hydroelectric dams combined.

"However, the heat generated by the falling water is not used to generate electricity. Instead, it melts the ice," Poul Christoffersen, a Cambridge University senior scientist who took part in the study, told CNN.

During warmer months, meltwater pools into lakes and streams on the surface of the ice sheet. Some of that water drains to the bottom of the ice sheet, falling through cracks and large fractures that form in the ice with movement and stress.

That meltwater contributes to more melting at the bottom of the ice sheet, and it also behaves as a lubricant that promotes faster flow and increases the quantity of ice discharged into the ocean.

Christoffersen explained that when researching the melting of ice sheet and glaciers at their bases, studies tended to focus on external heat sources.

"But what we hadn't really looked at was the heat generated by the draining meltwater itself," he said. "There's a lot of energy stored in the water that forms on the surface, and when it falls, the energy has to go somewhere."

The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest in the world and is already the biggest single contributor to global sea level rise.

"The ice in Greenland is melting on the surface faster than the snowfall can keep up with, so there is quite a big loss from the melting," Christoffersen told CNN. "In a substantial part of the ice, we get melt rates which can be up to five or six centimeters a day."

[Read more here]

The new Pliocene

 From a Twitter thread by ClimateWatcher

At 320 ppm [of CO2] we're basically back in the Pliocene

[The Pliocene was from 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago, when temperatures were 2-3 degrees C higher than today. Wikipedia's article on the Pliocene]

[Which means that most of Greenland's ice will melt, which would mean sea levels would rise 6 metres, or 20 feet.]

And we've got there magnitudes faster than anything we know about.

[The PETM is the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, when global temperatures rose 5-8 degrees C.]

Rain for the first time on Greenland summit

The National Science Foundation's Summit Greenland Environmental Observatory. Peter West / National Science Foundation

 From EcoWatch

This past weekend, researchers at the National Science Foundation's Summit Station observed rainfall at the peak of Greenland's rapidly melting ice sheet for the first time on record — an event driven by warming temperatures.

"This was the third time in less than a decade, and the latest date in the year on record, that the National Science Foundation's Summit Station had above-freezing temperatures and wet snow," the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said in a press release earlier this week. "There is no previous report of rainfall at this location (72.58°N 38.46°W), which reaches 3,216 meters (10,551 feet) in elevation."

Temperatures at the summit of the ice sheet rose above freezing at around 5:00 am local time on Saturday, "and the rain event began at the same time," NSIDC noted. "For the next several hours, rain fell and water droplets were seen on surfaces near the camp as reported by on-station observers."

The anomalous rainfall at the ice sheet's peak marked the start of a three-day period during which "above-freezing temperatures and rainfall were widespread to the south and west of Greenland... with exceptional readings from several remote weather stations in the area," said NSIDC. "Total rainfall on the ice sheet was 7 billion tons."

The warmer-than-usual temperatures caused significant melting of the ice sheet, with melt extent peaking at 337,000 square miles on August 14.

"Warm conditions and the late-season timing of the three-day melt event coupled with the rainfall led to both high melting and high runoff volumes to the ocean," NSIDC observed. "On August 15 2021, the surface mass lost was seven times above the mid-August average... At this point in the season, large areas of bare ice exist along much of the southwestern and northern coastal areas, with no ability to absorb the melt or rainfall. Therefore, the accumulated water on the surface flows downhill and eventually into the ocean."

This is a major tipping point for sea level rise.  The highest point of the Greenland ice sheet is 3694 m (12119 ft).  Temperatures decline at roughly 6.5 degrees C per 1000 km of elevation, so at the peak of the Greenland ice sheet, temperatures should be +- 23 degrees C cooler than at sea level.  So if temperatures at sea level in Greenland are above 23 degrees C, then the Greenland ice sheet is going to melt even at the summit.  But if the summit starts to melt,  then it will shrink, and it will warm, slowly but inexorably.  So temperatures at sea level won't need to be so high for the ice to melt.  For example, if the summit shrinks just 100 metres, its temperature will (everything else be equal) rise by 0.65 degrees C or 1.2 degrees F.  So sea level temperatures of 23.5 will be enough to melt the summit.  And so more will melt, and so the summit will shrink further, starting a doom loop which leads to the Greenland ice cap totally melting.  

This will take hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, but the point is, once it's started, it won't stop.  Over the last 50 years the Arctic has warmed 3 degrees C even though the world has warmed by 1 degree C, because of its own doom loop: ever smaller and thinner summer sea ice contributes to the heating, because the ice reflects the sun's rays but dark seawater absorbs them.   And of course, this effect is far worse in summer, and we are now routinely getting Arctic heatwaves.  If/when  the Greenland ice cap melts, the sea level will rise 6 metres (20 feet).  And that's without taking into account the melting of the Antarctic ice cap.

You can kiss goodbye to most major coastal cities.

Rapid melt of Greenland's largest ice shelf

From Bloomberg Green:

As the summer melt season reaches its peak, the largest Arctic ice shelf has jettisoned a piece of ice twice the size of Manhattan.

The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland reported on Monday that the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream has lost more than 19 square miles (50 square kilometers) for the second year in a row. The giant glacier has now been reduced by 60 square miles in the past two decades. 

Ice shelves are a barrier that prevent land-based glaciers from sliding into the ocean, where they go on to melt and contributed to rising sea levels. When those structures weaken and disintegrate, as the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream has now done, glacier movement picks up.

“Using almost 30 years of satellite data, we see speed up in the glacier flow over the past decade,” said Anne Solgaard, a research scientist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland in a statement. The current disintegration is only part of the problem, she noted, with acceleration measured upstream also “indicating a large-scale change to this huge glacier.”

Northeastern Greenland has warmed by about 3°C since 1980, and both this year and last have brought record-breaking heat. The Arctic has long faced the onslaught of rising temperatures, and the effects are only intensifying. As nations court new shipping and fossil-fuel exploration opportunities, scientists warn that summertime Arctic sea ice may only have years left. 

A glacier section broke off Northeast Greenland Ice Stream, according to report from the National Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.  Source: European Space Agency via AP Photo

Greenland's ice sheet passes point of no return

 From Business Insider

Greenland's ice sheet may have hit a tipping point that sets it on an irreversible path to completely disappearing.

Snowfall that normally replenishes Greenland's glaciers each year can no longer keep up with the pace of ice melt, according to researchers at Ohio State University. That means that the Greenland ice sheet — the world's second-largest ice body — would continue to lose ice even if global temperatures stop rising.

In their study, published Thursday in the journal Nature, the scientists reviewed 40 years of monthly satellite data from more than 200 large glaciers that are draining into the ocean across Greenland.

"What we've found is that the ice that's discharging into the ocean is far surpassing the snow that's accumulating on the surface of the ice sheet," Michalea King, the study's lead author and researcher at Ohio State University's Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, said in a press release.

Complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet could raise sea levels 23 feet by the year 3000. If that happens, the ocean would swallow coastal cities across the globe. Greenland's ice is already the world's largest single contributor to sea-level rise. In just the next 80 years, its current melt rate would add another 2.75 inches to global sea levels, according to a study published in December.

"Glacier retreat has knocked the dynamics of the whole ice sheet into a constant state of loss," Ian Howat, a glaciologist and co-author on the paper, said in the release. "Even if the climate were to stay the same or even get a little colder, the ice sheet would still be losing mass."

ttt

Water from the Greenland ice sheet flows through heather and peat during unseasonably warm weather on August 1, 2019 at Eqip Sermia, Greenland.
Source: CNN

80 degrees in the Arctic

Source: A Heatwave in Greenland (The Atlantic)

This story will provide important context for the headline, and I encourage you to read it—but really, the headline tells you what you need to know: It was 80 degrees Fahrenheit [27 degrees C] above the Arctic Circle this week.

A little farther south, in Siberia—you know, the region of world we reference when we want to connote something cold—it was 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Arctic sea ice in the neighboring Kara Sea took the deepest May nose dive ever recorded. Oh, and random swaths of the region are on fire. Things are extremely wrong.

Let’s start with the heat above Arctic Circle. Mika Rantanen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, flagged a map showing blistering heat across western Siberia. The region has been the epicenter of an explosive heat wave that has rippled across the Arctic this week. Models forecast temperatures there will be as much as 36 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for this time of year.

[Read more here]

There are still people who say that global heating isn't a thing.

Enough water to fill Lake Michigan

© Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson Churchill Manitoba

From The Hill:

Antarctica and Greenland lost thousands of gigatons of ice in the last 16 years, according to results from a new NASA mission published Thursday.

Scientists reported that the two land masses have lost 5,000 gigatons of ice in that time period, which is enough to fill Lake Michigan. A gigaton is equal to a billion metric tons. 

The data was measured by ICESat-2, a NASA satellite launched in 2018, following a mission from ICESat that gathered data from 2003 to 2009. Using information from both missions, researchers calculated the scale of melting.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said last week that Arctic ice reached its second-lowest extent on record in 2019. NOAA also said earlier this month that they are projecting 2020 will be the hottest year on record, surpassing a record set in 2016. 

The loss in Arctic  [Antarctic and Greenland] ice is expected to result in rising sea levels globally. 

"It will reach us eventually here, even though it's really far away and hard to think about," said Helen Fricker, a glaciologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego told NPR. 

"How much ice we are going to lose, and how quickly we are going to lose it, is a really key thing that needs to be understood, so that we can plan."

Record decline in Greenland ice sheet

From Reuters:

Greenland’s ice sheet shrank last year by more than at any time since record-taking began, according to a study published on Wednesday that showed the risk that climate change could cause sharp rises in global sea levels.

The huge melt was due not only to warm temperatures, but also atmospheric circulation patterns that have become more frequent due to climate change, suggesting scientists may be underestimating the threat to the ice, the authors found.

“We’re destroying ice in decades that was built over thousands of years,” Marco Tedesco, research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who led the study, told Reuters. “What we do here has huge implications for everywhere else in the world.”

Greenland’s ice sheet, the world’s second largest, recorded its biggest outright drop in what scientists call “surface mass” since record-keeping began in 1948, according to the study.

Greenland lost around 600 billion tonnes of water last year, an amount that would contribute about 1.5 millimetres of sea level rise, according to the study from Columbia and Belgium’s Liege university, published in The Cryosphere. Greenland’s ice sheet covers 80% of the island and could raise global sea levels by up to 23 feet if it melted entirely.

Greenland contributed 20-25% of global sea level rise over the last few decades, Tedesco said. If carbon emissions continue to grow, this share could rise to around 40% by 2100, he said, although there is considerable uncertainty about how ice melt will develop in Antarctica - the largest ice sheet on Earth.

Most models used by scientists to project Greenland’s future ice loss do not capture the impact of changing atmospheric circulation patterns - meaning such models may be significantly underestimating future melting, the authors said.

“It’s almost like missing half of the melting,” said Tedesco.

With climate change impacts from massive bushfires in Australia to thawing permafrost in the Arctic unfolding faster than many scientists had once anticipated, the study underscored the risks associated with burning fossil fuels.

A report by the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published in September projected that sea levels could rise by one metre by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions keep climbing.

Massive freshwater melt - like that of Greenland - threatens the hundreds of millions of people who live below current high tide lines or annual flood levels. It also changes ocean salinity, which can disrupt marine ecosytems.

Climate change and its consequences isn't something happening in the far off future.  It's happening now.  We must act.  Now.

Greenland ice melt
Source: Climate Signals

Greenland & Antarctic ice loss up six-fold since 1990s

From ZME Science:

Global warming is kicking in across the globe and Greenland and Antarctica are among the worst affected regions.

Both are losing ice six times quicker than in the 1990s, and if that continues sea level rise will increase an extra 17 centimeters by 2100 — in line with the worst-case scenario set by UN experts.

Those are the main conclusion of an analysis by experts from 50 international organizations, who have used data from 26 studies to calculate changes in the mass of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica between 1992 and 2018.

The results were published in two articles in the online version of the journal Nature in 2018 (Antarctica) and 2019 (Greenland). The researchers now reported the combined data from the two areas in a press release distributed by the University of Leeds, UK.

The figures show that Greenland and Antarctica lost 6.4 trillion tons of ice between 1992 and 2017, which raised the level of the world’s seas by 17.8 millimeters. Of the total sea-level rise, 10.6 millimeters (60%) were due to Greenland ice losses and 7.2 millimeters (40%) to Antarctic losses.

The combined rate of ice loss has increased six-fold in just three decades, from 81 billion tons per year in the 1990s to 475 billion tons per year in the 2010s. This means, according to the authors, that the polar ice sheets are now responsible for a third of all sea-level rise.