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Is Greenland turning from white to green?
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by YankeeJim | January 21, 2011 at 05:35 pm
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Is Greenland turning from white to green?
Why is it called Greenland if so much of the time it looks like Iceland? Greenland is melting at a faster rate and adding water to the sea that contributes to the rising sea level. The entire process represents a chemical change too that affects the environment.
What is happening to Greenland is evidence of what is happening elsewhere that supports the notion of global warming.
“Greenland ice sheet saw record melt, study finds
'Area of the size of France melted in 2010 which was not melting in 1979,' expert says
The ice sheet covering Greenland melted at the fastest rate since records began in 1979, a new study shows. That’s important because the ice sheet is becoming a major contributor to projected sea level rises in coming decades.
"This past melt season was exceptional, with melting in some areas stretching up to 50 days longer than average," said study co-author Marco Tedesco, director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at The City College of New York.
"Melting in 2010 started exceptionally early at the end of April and ended quite late in mid- September," he added in a statement released with the study.
"Over the past 30 years, the area subject to melting in Greenland has been increasing" at about 17,000 square kilometers a year, Tedesco stated on his research website.
"This is equivalent to adding a melt-region the size of Washington state every ten years," he added. "Or, in alternative, this means that an area of the size of France melted in 2010 which was not melting in 1979."
In the study published in "Environmental Research Letters," the researchers also said that Greenland's summer temperatures last year were up to 3 degrees Centigrade above the average and that the ice sheet saw reduced snowfall.
Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, had the warmest spring and summer since records began in 1873.
Because of the diminished snowfall, bare ice was exposed earlier than average and longer than in previous years, contributing to the extreme record.
"Bare ice is much darker than snow and absorbs more solar radiation," said Tedesco. "Other ice melting feedback loops that we are examining include the impact of lakes on the glacial surface, of dust and soot deposited over the ice sheet and how surface meltwater affects the flow of the ice toward the ocean."
The researchers analyzed satellite and land surface data.
The current contribution of Greenland ice melt to global sea level rise is about .02 inches a year, but the potential impact is enormous.
About a quarter the size of the United States, Greenland has about one-twentieth of the world's ice — the equivalent of about 21 feet of global sea rise were it to completely melt into the sea.
That process could take centuries to complete, but once started would be difficult to reverse.”
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (1)
at 07:51 on February 7th, 2011
Okay but to be significant you can't just look at Greenland's ice sheet being depleted and say "OMG let's take drastic action and create a carbon futures market so the people who gave grants for all this climate change research (siemens for one) can consumate their scheme!"
Or create some wacky dishonest scheme like Kyoto protocol which has in effect only made the problem worse.
When you point at a colder than usual winter in a particular city people will say "climate change" may have shifted the jetstream and that city is colder while another got warmer. What is Anarctica's ice doing?And isn't this about our coldest winter now?
(I have an article hacked together awhile back detailing my controversial but plain sense views on AGW, click on my profile if you want, of course you don't need to but it provides a little clarification on Kyoto and the sun's role in this)
I was ROFLMAO when I saw Nancy "the rat" Pelosi charter a congressional junket on a large jet to fly to Greenland oh, about 2+ years ago. It was late may, they stepped off the plane and took a look around at all the late spring's melting ice and declared it was damning proof global warming was real and needed action on now. Probably flew right back and bought stock in Al Gore's silicon vally startup.