Unprecedented May heat in Greenland; update on 2011 Greenland ice melt
The record books for Greenland's climate were re-written on Tuesday, when the mercury hit 24.8°C (76.6°F) at Narsarsuaq, Greenland, on the southern coast. According to weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera, this is the hottest temperature on record in Greenland for May, and is just 0.7°C (1.3°F) below the hottest temperature ever measured in Greenland. The previous May record was 22.4°C (72.3°F) at Kangerlussuaq (called Sondre Stormfjord in Danish) on May 31, 1991. The 25.2°C at Narsarsuaq on June 22, 1957 is the only June temperature measured in Greenland warmer than yesterday's 24.8°C reading. Wunderground's extremes page shows that the all-time warmest temperature record for Greenland is 25.5°C (77.9°F) set on July 26, 1990. The exceptional warmth this week was caused by the combination of an intense ridge of high pressure and a local foehn wind, said the Danish Meteorological Institute. The unusual May heat has extended to Scotland, which had its hottest May temperature on record on May 25 at Achnagart: 29.3°C (85°F). Greenland's Narsarsuaq has seen a string of 3 consecutive days over 70°F this week--the 3rd, 7th, and 12th warmest days there since record keeping began in 1941. The ridge of high pressure responsible is expected to stay in place several more days, bringing additional 70° days over Southern Greenland. The warm May temperatures could be setting the stage for a big Greenland melt season this summer--the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) is predicting a 50 - 60% that the southern 2/3 of Greenland will experience above-average temperatures this summer. They forecast just a 10 - 15% chance of below-average temperatures.
Figure 1. Difference between the number of melt days in 2011 and the average number of melt days during the period 1979 - 2010. Large sections of the island experienced twenty more days with melting conditions than average. Image credit: Arctic Report Card
Why Greenland is important
If the massive icecap on Greenland were to melt, global sea level would rise 7 meters (23 ft). Temperatures in Greenland are predicted to rise 3°C by 2100, to levels similar to those present during that warm period 120,000 years ago. During that period, roughly half of the Greenland ice sheet melted, increasing sea level by 2.2 - 3.4 meters (7.2 - 11.2 ft.) However, the 2007 IPCC report expects melting of the Greenland ice sheet to occur over about a 1,000 year period, delaying much of the expected sea level rise for many centuries. While Greenland's ice isn't going to be melting completely and catastrophically flooding low-lying areas of the earth in the next few decades (sea level is only rising about 3 mm per year or 1.2 inches per decade at present), the risk later this century needs to be taken seriously. Higher sea levels will cause increased erosion, salt water intrusion, and storm surge damage in coastal areas, in addition to a loss of barrier formations such as islands, sand bars, and reefs that would normally protect coastal zones from battering by waves and wind. Additionally, coastal zones are sites of incredible economic and agricultural activity, which would also be negatively affected by higher sea levels. Currently, melting ice from Greenland is thought to cause about 0.7 mm/year of global sea level rise, which is about 20 - 25% of the global total, according to an international research group led by the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, in an article published the latest issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 1 June 2012. In 2007, the IPCC estimated that Greenland ice melt was responsible for only 10 - 15% of the total global sea level rise. Ice loss in Greenland is accelerating, and if current ice loss trends continue for the next ten years, Greenland's contribution to sea level rise will double to 1.4 mm/yr by 2022. The increased ice loss in Greenland is being driven by a combination of warmer air temperatures, warmer ocean temperatures, and loss of Arctic sea ice. Ocean temperatures surrounding Southern Greenland have increased by 1 - 2°C since 1990 (figure at right.)
Figure 2. Monthly unsmoothed values of the total mass (in gigatons, Gt), of the Greenland ice sheet from the GRACE satellites. On the horizontal axis, each year begins on 1 January. Each small + symbol is a monthly value. Between 2003 - 2009, Greenland lost an average of 250 gigatons of ice per year. In 2011, the loss was 70% greater than that. Image credit: Arctic Report Card
Update on the 2011 Greenland melt season
According to the 2011 Arctic Report Card, it was another very warm year in Greenland in 2011, which led to substantial melting of the ice. Here are some of the highlights from the report:
1) The area and duration of melting at the surface of the Greenland ice sheet in summer 2011 were the third highest since 1979.
2) Increased surface melting and below average summer snowfall in recent years has made the icecap steadily darker. In 2011, the icecap had the lowest reflectivity (albedo) of any year since satellite measurements of reflectivity began in 2000.
3) The area of glaciers that empty into the sea continued to decrease, though at less than half the rate of the previous 10 years.
4) Total ice sheet mass loss in 2011 was 70% larger than the 2003 - 2009 average annual loss rate of -250 gigatons per year. According to satellite gravity data obtained since 2002, ice sheet mass loss is accelerating.
Resources:
Wunderground's Greenland page.
Wunderground's sea level rise page.
Danish Meteorological Institute's extremes page for Greenland.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Climate doesn't just "return to __[insert time period/climate state/average temperature here]___" it doesn't have some all-encompassing global equilibrium over all time that it always tries to attain. The equilibrium is based upon physics and the current state of the land surface, oceans, and atmosphere.
Meteorologists nor climate scientists think what you describe. Climate should be "static" if the drivers of the climate system remain relatively constant. Climate should change if the drivers of climate change. Over the last 50-100 years, the drivers of climate have been changing at an accelerating pace, from an ever-increasing ratio of human activities.
This is exactly how we know what could happen when the drivers of climate are altered in a profound way, quicker than almost all other times in geologic history. You have stated one of the exact reasons why scientists are concerned.
We already had pop ups!!
Not sure what the Navy is thinking, but there's no way the mountains on Washington's Olympic Peninsula are going to be submerged.
Subduction?
So we should sing and dance our way through life and not give a damn about those who follow us? Is that your philosophy? Stick your fingers in your ears and ignore what is happening?
We're kicking a process into gear that is going to melt the Greenland and the Antarctica ice caps. Once we put enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere there is no know way to snatch them back.
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Green appliances will save you money on your electricity and water bills. You might pay a few more dollars up front, but you'll almost certainly save much more over the life of the appliance.
Buying efficient appliances is smart business thinking.
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Wow, 76.6 deg. F in Greenland! That's pretty warm. I spent a year in Greenland in 1968-69 at Sondestrom Air Base when I was a GCA (Ground Control Approach) radar tech in the Air Force. The warmest day I remember was about 62 deg F. In the picture below, you can see the icecap in the background behind "Sugar-loaf mountain". This picture was from about 40 years ago and what you would see on approach to the runway. Due to Sugar-loaf mtn, acft had to land heading NE and depart the other direction or SW.
Here's a picture from atop Sugar-loaf mtn looking SE. In the distance you can see the Kangerlussuaq Fjord with what used to be Sondestrom Air Base, but now called 'Kangerlussuaq Airport'.
I keep showing you satellite photos of the on-the-ground first effects of global warming and you aren't looking. It'll be knocking at your front door soon.
Although there is not enough available energy to cause the rapid melting that alarmists desire to induce into the silent masses, there is still a lot of room for thought on any weather pattern change that gets rainfall onto the Greenland and other northern hemisphere ice and permafrost.
I see the Arctic ice cap the same way as a thermostat in a freezer. If the thermostat fails even thought the freezer is otherwise unchanged the temps within the freezer rise and the thing rapidly stops keeping things cool and itself heats up to the ambient background temperature,(first law of thermodynamics.)
If we start to get significant rainfall over the extreme northern latitudes then the heat held in the rain will cause massive amounts of ice to melt and permafrost to become MUD!
Result? That old boring methane story, plus possibly an increase in the latitude where the thermohaline currents descend in the Northern Atlantic. Not exactly a desirable scenario.
WASHINGTON -- The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.
Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.
So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.
"The fact that it's 400 is significant," said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. "It's just a reminder to everybody that we haven't fixed this and we're still in trouble."
Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.
For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.
It's been at least 800,000 years – probably more – since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.
Until now.
Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They've been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.
So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.
Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.
The Arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon dioxide in the air and effects, said Pieter Tans, a senior NOAA scientist.
"This is the first time the entire Arctic is that high," he said.
Tans called reaching the 400 number "depressing," and Butler said it was "a troubling milestone."
"It's an important threshold," said Carnegie Institution ecologist Chris Field, a scientist who helps lead the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "It is an indication that we're in a different world."
Ronald Prinn, an atmospheric sciences professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said 400 is more a psychological milestone than a scientific one. We think in hundreds, and "we're poking our heads above 400," he said.
Tans said the readings show how much the Earth's atmosphere and its climate are being affected by humans. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tons in 2011, up 3.2 percent, the International Energy Agency announced last week.
The agency said it's becoming unlikely that the world can achieve the European goal of limiting global warming to just 2 degrees based on increasing pollution and greenhouse gas levels.
"The news today, that some stations have measured concentrations above 400 ppm in the atmosphere, is further evidence that the world's political leaders – with a few honorable exceptions – are failing catastrophically to address the climate crisis," former Vice President Al Gore, the highest-profile campaigner against global warming, said in an email. "History will not understand or forgive them."
But political dynamics in the United States mean there's no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.
"These milestones are always worth noting," said economist Myron Ebell at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute. "As carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global temperatures flattened out, contrary to the models" used by climate scientists and the United Nations.
He contends temperatures have not risen since 1998, which was unusually hot.
Temperature records contradict that claim. Both 2005 and 2010 were warmer than 1998, and the entire decade of 2000 to 2009 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA.
I believe the subduction zone is offshore to the west. Mount Olympus is 8000ft.
Dance and sing our way thru life. There's millions to be made in sports, acting, dancing, singing, that's where the money is bro, why get educated and get a skill that doesn't pay anything. Lets all party till we diiiieeeeeee. The future generations are seeing this, so don't think for a minute things are gonna be researched out and doing analysis on anything. Follow the money trail is where everybody is going, in other words, DOOOM
Use fossil fuels more efficiently
Save old-growth forests,
Plant trees when you travel
1 tree every 2,000 miles (3200 km) by car
1 tree every 1300 miles (2000 km) by plane
1 tree every 100 gallons (375 liters) of gasoline
1 tree every 1000 kilowatt-hours (one kwhr ~= 1.9 pounds CO2
That's not enough. We cannot plant our way out of this problem. We certainly can't plant significant numbers of trees in places like Arizona and New Mexico because we've increased the drought problems there. There's not enough water to support forests.
We've got to drastically cut our burning of fossil fuels.
It's just that simple.
It's not exactly that simple. The desert southwest is not exactly favorable for most types of flora. And even if we did change the land cover in a large way, it would not be enough to counter the ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases (let alone the amount we already have released).
Tepid statements like that just provide space for denialism. Myron Ebell and all the others repeating that claim should be called what they are - liars.
One thing notable in your photos of Greenland is clean air. This is what clean air looks like folks. If your air doesn't look like this, then it is not clean air.
Conversely, high winds do not create algae. What's your argument?
Planting trees is a great thing. If you're planting them in tropic/temperate zones. Planting trees at higher elevations decreased albedo and adds to global warming.
Planting trees will help. Trees in hot climates help cool and that cuts down of AC/electricity usage. But we can't plant our way out of this problem.
To get a fuller picture, Vivek Arora of Environment Canada and the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and Alvaro Montenegro of St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, used a computer model to estimate the overall effect of reforesting.
They used what they admit are "somewhat extreme" scenarios in which half or all of the world's croplands have been converted to forests by 2060. Foresting all or half the world's cropland reduced global temperatures in 2100 by 0.45 °C and 0.25 °C respectively.
Arora reckons that no more than 10 to 15 per cent of existing cropland is likely to be forested, so the effects will be even smaller. "The overall temperature benefits of any realistic afforestation efforts are expected to be marginal," he says.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20587-plant ing-forests-wont-stop-global-warming.html
If we quit growing food and planted trees on 100% of our crop lands we would pull the global temperature down only 0.25°C.
I'm really happy to see you looking for solutions, but planting trees is not enough.
Again...
I wish they would just start posting Dr. Masters blog in a climate forum, and link to someone who focuses on tropical weather on the tropical page.
Inundations to 13,000ft in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado.
Perhaps this is the Polish Navy your referring to.
Lotsa er, "first" commenters seems.
"Bunk-er" comes to mind.
LOL
Thank you for this post, as its something that has a bit more to it than meets the eye.
Where I work in the countryside there were/was a plantation of about 15,000 olive trees ranging from 60 to about 200 years old.
The Government brought out a grant system to replace them with newer more productive varieties.
2 years ago all the 15,000 trees were cut down and then cut up into logs and sold off for firewood to a large local city, they were taken away by trucks.
The newly planted olive trees are not in a good condition due to the drought and will need extensive irrigation to survive, this will have to be supplied by tractor bowser's from distant allready stressed water sources.The old trees did not need water as they were resistant to drought.
Meanwhile the new plantation is being rigorously ploughed to keep down weeds, which causes erosion,there are dust storms and land slumps.
In about 8 years if the new trees survive they will start to produce olives, which few people now seem to want to buy due to oversupply and the depression etc.
This plantation is only one of thousands which are suffering the same fate in my area.
Replanting trees is not always a good idea. Sometimes best leave the old ones alone!
Seems to me that there's a weather blog for those who are anti-science. A great place for ostriches to gather and talk about the magic of weather.
Anyway, speaking of ice, here's a chart (from here) showing the current condition of ice in the Arctic Sea. In short: it's going away.
Click for larger and more detailed image:
Post 89 some people sign up just for the tropical part of the site..
I'm going to get off now before people start demanding my comment be deleted.XD.
No, it's not that simple. For one, even where trees are protected, they are being killed by advancing deserts and illegal logging. And hardly any trees, world wide, are protected. Second, even if large trees lower carbon dioxide, they will eventually be killed by acid rain. The rapid acidification of the ocean will kill all our food fish. There's only one solution to carbon pollution. Quit burning fossil fuels.
LargoFl, if we continue to live our present lifestyle, your kids may live on not much at all. Do you really want to take that gamble.
yeah, big algae blooms happen. how does that correlate with the event? i don't see a correlation. we don't know that the dead algae welled up at this locality has anything to do with normal or abnormal blooms. we do know that the occurrence is regular, as is the presence of algae at great quantities in lower ocean waters near shores.
Appocolypse much? You sound like the Cmc
there is a tropical weather blog but he dosent update enough..if that is supposed to be the "new tropical blog" then let me know and I will look there to blog and the "weather enthusisants" can have this blog but Im sure they would follow us over there as there is a climate change blog which they dont blog in as there are only 193 comments in that blog..
What is that
500 mb. pressure anomalies for mid-June. Supports the idea that we need to watch the Gulf and Caribbean then.
Last Week Before Beryl Landfall:
This Week After Beryl Landfall:
(Keep in mind cutoff on data occurred on Tuesday at 7 AM EST. Much more rain has fallen since that time over the Southeast.)
Next Thursday, we will get a new analysis which will account for all the rainfall received from Tropical Storm Beryl. We will then know the full extent of the drought relief Beryl brought to the drought-stricken Southeast US.
(Photo By Michael Wolf)
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