Global warming: ‘Extreme melting’ on Greenland ice sheet

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Bob Berwyn

Warm temps speed summer meltdown
Satellites Observe Widespread Melting Event on Greenland

In the images above, areas classified as “probable melt” (light pink) correspond to sites where at least one satellite detected surface melting. Areas classified as “melt” (dark pink) correspond to sites where two or three satellites detected melting.
Color bar for Satellites Observe Widespread Melting Event on Greenland

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY — Warm summer weather in July extended beyond the U.S. all the way to Greenland, where NASA scientists recorded the largest extent of surface melting since modern satellite monitoring started 30 years ago.

Almost the entire Greenland ice sheet — 97 percent — saw at least some degree of melting, according to data from an array of satellites, according to NASA scientists, who characterized what they observed as “an extreme melt event.”

Early in the month (July 8), the data showed that about 40 percent of the ice sheet was thawing at the surface. By July 12, the extent of melting spread dramatically beyond the norm. (more…)

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Commission rejects Greenland plan to increase whaling

Posted on July 7, 2012 by Bob Berwyn

International Whaling Commission says requested quota increase aimed at boosting sales of whale meat in tourist restaurants, not at providing sustenance for indigenous peoples

A humpback whale and its calf in NOAA’s Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. Photo courtesy NOAA.

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY — While the U.S. government arrived at the 64th meeting of the International Whaling Commission announcing an unrelenting commitment to conserve whale populations, animal welfare activists criticized an early vote by the U.S. in favor of increasing Greenland’s quota of whales in the next few years.

At issue is the debate over subsistence whaling, which is seen as critical to sustaining traditional culture among indigenous populations in the Arctic region.

Despite the U.S. vote, the commission rejected the Greenland plan with a large coalition of countries including all EU members (except Denmark) and all Latin American countries voting against the increase. (more…)

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Global warming: 70 feet of sea level rise?

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Bob Berwyn

 2 to 3 feet of sea level rise expected this century

A relatively small increase in ocean temps could trigger a meltdown of the West Antarctic ice shelf, resulting in a significant rise in sea levels.

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY — Scientists continue to grapple with the question of how global warming will affect sea levels, looking at evidence of past climate change to try and determine how the future will play out.

In one of the latest studies, researchers from Rutgers University looked at rock and soil cores in Virginia, Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific and New Zealand, dating back to the Pliocene epoch, 2.7 million to 3.2 million years ago — the last time concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were as high as they are now, and atmospheric temperatures were 2 degrees C higher than they are now.

“The natural state of the earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 20 meters higher than at present,” said Kenneth G. Miller, professor of earth and planetary sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University. “The current trajectory for the 21st century global rise of sea level is 2 to 3 feet (0.8 to1 meter) due to warming of the oceans, partial melting of mountain glaciers, and partial melting of Greenland and Antarctica.” (more…)

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‘Arctic paradox’ explored at Breckenridge weather summit

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Bob Berwyn

Click on the image for more information on Greenland's rapidly thinning ice cap.

Final day of  weather conference looks at global climate factors

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY —Along with steadily increasing temperatures, climate researchers say that global warming will result in more extreme weather events, including droughts, floods, cold snaps and heat waves.

The mechanisms driving those extremes aren’t completely understood, but one factor could be the so-called Arctic paradox, with warmer air over the polar region displacing colder air to the south.

The first session of the final day at the 2012 Weather and Climate Summit in Breckenridge will explore the link between the warmer Arctic regime and last winter’s severe snowstorms and cold temperatures in mid-latitudes, especially along the U.S. east coast and in Europe.

All the presentations are webcast live at the summit’s USTREAM channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/weather-and-climate-summit (more…)

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Global warming: Researchers find extreme melting of Greenland ice cap even without record temperatures

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Bob Berwyn

Marco Tedesco standing on the edge of one of four moulins (drainage holes) he and his team found at the bottom of a supraglacial lake during the expedition to Greenland in the summer, 2011. PHOTO COURTEST P. ALEXANDER.

Feedback loop reinforces rapid ice loss

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY —Temperatures don’t have to reach record highs to fuel extreme melting of the Greeland ice cap, according to new research suggesting that glaciers could undergo a self-amplifying cycle of melting and warming that would be difficult to halt.

“We are finding that even if you don’t have record-breaking highs, as long as warm temperatures persist you can get record-breaking melting because of positive feedback mechanisms,” said Dr. Marco Tedesco, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The City College of New York.

Tedesco, who directs CCNY’s Cryospheric Processes Laboratory, collected data for the analysis this past summer during a four-week expedition to the Jakobshavn Isbræ glacier in western Greenland.  Their arrival preceded the onset of the melt season.

Combining data gathered on the ground with microwave satellite recordings and the output from a model of the ice sheet, he and graduate student Patrick Alexander found a near-record loss of snow and ice this year. The extensive melting continued even without last year’s record highs. (more…)

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Global warming: Glacier meltdown in Greenland

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Bob Berwyn

Greenland's Mittivakkat Glacier is melting faster than expected. PHOTO COURTESY DR. EDWARD HANNA, UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD.

Record ice losses recorded the last two years

By Summit Voice

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SUMMIT COUNTY — Warmer temperatures around Greenland’s Mittivakkat Glacier since 1995 have caused the ice to melt faster than expected, according to a team of researchers led by Dr. Edward Hanna, of the University of Sheffield.

The Mittivakkat Glacier has been observed longer than any other glacier in Greenland, and the findings suggest that recent Mittivakkat Glacier mass losses, which have been driven largely by higher surface temperatures and low precipitation, are representative of the broader region, which includes many hundreds of local glaciers in Greenland.

Observations of other glaciers in Greenland show terminus retreats comparable to that of Mittivakkat Glacier. These glaciers are similar to the Mittivakkat Glacier in size and elevation range. (more…)

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Research pinpoints historic Greenland climate changes

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Bob Berwyn

Greenland.

New evidence shows Norse abandoned settlements when the weather got colder

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY — Based on archaeological evidence, researchers have long speculated that the Norse settlements on Greenland disappeared when the climate turned much colder in the North Atlantic. Now, paleo-climatologists have reconstructed a 5,600-year temperature record from lake sediments that gives an accurate picture of air temperatures where the Vikings — and their Stone Age predecessors — lived.

Core samples from Greenland’s thick ice cap and other parts of the Arctic give a broader climate picture, showing that the region has experienced significant temperatures cycles during the past 100,000 years.

“This is the first quantitative temperature record from the area they were living in,” said William D’Andrea, primary author of a paper appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “So we can say there is a definite cooling trend in the region right before the Norse disappear.” (more…)

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Deep ice core samples reveal Earth’s climate history

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Jenney Coberly

Study of ice core samples deposited over millennia reveal that climate change can be very rapid, happening in a matter of decades

ice core room

Ice core storage facility at the NICL

By Jenney Coberly

Deep in the frozen vault of the National Ice Core Laboratory in Lakewood, Colorado, pieces of ice up to nearly a half a million years old are helping researchers unravel the mysteries of climate change. The ice samples were collected in Antarctica and Greenland. They are part of one of the world’s largest collections of ice cores in a program funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Antarctica and Greenland have layers of snow and ice preserved in thick glaciers over hundreds of thousands of years. Through studies of the ice cores extracted by drilling thousands of meters into these glaciers, scientists can create mathematical models of Earth’s climate history. They’ve discovered extreme climate swings in Earth’s past, some of which occurred very rapidly, in less than a decade.

Ice core samples provide information on atmospheric composition, temperature and other climate data in a very long and continuous record, making them one of the most important tools for climate researchers.

“It’s very important in climate change research to know just what time is represented by a particular thickness in an ice core,” said former ice core lab director and USGS climate scientist Todd Hinkley. “It doesn’t really do you much good to say, ‘Well, we went in pretty deep, so this must be old’. You’ve got to be precise about it, and the ice cores do allow this. This is their strength as a scientific research tool.”

(more…)

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Melt-water creates positive feedback loop in icecap thaw

Posted on November 6, 2010 by Bob Berwyn

Water on the surface of glaciers and ice sheets can trickle down through cracks and transport heat to deep inside, speeding melting. PHOTO COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO.

CU research shows how water can warm glaciers and icecaps from within

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY — New research shows that water flowing through ice sheets like Greenland‘s can spread heat throughout the ice and speed up melting tremendously, according to the  University of Colorado at Boulder.

“We are finding that once such water flow is initiated through a new section of ice sheet, it can warm rather significantly and quickly, sometimes in just 10 years, ” said lead author Thomas Phillips, a research scientist with Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. CIRES is a joint institute between CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Existing models of ice sheets haven’t accounted for the heat that’s spread internally — they only factored in surface heat from the sun’s radiation and warmer air on the surface of the ice, the researchers said. Based on the study, the Greeland ice sheet could respond to such warming on the order of decades rather than the centuries projected by conventional thermal models. (more…)

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Environment: Greenland ice loss speeds up

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Bob Berwyn

An iceberg calved from a glacier floats in the Jacobshavn fjord in southwest Greenland. A new University of Colorado at Boulder study indicates Greenland continues to lose ice mass, and the rate of loss is accelerating. Photo courtesy Konrad Steffen, University of Colorado at Boulder.

New studies suggest global warming is having very real impacts on ice in the Earth’s cold regions

By Bob Berwyn

SUMMIT COUNTY — Scientists from Denmark and the University of Colorado say the rate of ice-loss in Greenland is accelerating and moving up the northwest coast of the North Atlantic island.

The researchers made their findings by comparing data from satellites to readings from long-term monitoring stations on bedrock on the edges of the ice sheet.

About 80 percent of Greenland is covered with ice, holding about 20 percent of the world’s ice, or the equivalent of a 21-foot rise in sea level should it all melt. Air temperatures over the Greenland ice sheet have increased by about 4 degrees since 1991, which most scientists attribute to a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (more…)

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