In fact, the amount of snow that has melted this year over Greenland could cover the surface size of the U.S. more than twice.

If it covers the US 2 feet deep it's impressive. If it covers the US two snowflakes deep - not so impressive. What a meaningless statement.

Reply: I agree, you need to know the depth he's talking about. I assume it is just a covering.

Wow. According to some deniers, Greenland was getting colder and the snow cover was increasing.

Guess they were wrong. Not surprising.

What's happening in the Arctic is quite disturbing.

Looking at the melting index chart, 2003 melting was about the same as 2007 and 2002, 2004 and 2005 had more melting than 2007.
There was an increasing melting trend from 1988 to 2002 and a decreasing trend from 2002 to 2007.

The southern part of Greenland is at the same latitude as ice free Stockholm and Anchorage Alaska. Last months National Geographic has a nice article on the Big Melt. Some of the melt lakes and rivers forming on the ice cap are impressive.

The Greenland ice cap is also fundamentally unstable. The only reason it is in place is that it is so large that it takes a long time to melt. It is also so large that it is able to create it own weather conditions.

Now that greenhouse gases have warmed the arctic, it is melting faster and faster. Seasonal snow is melting sooner, arctic sea ice is at a record minimum and this all feeds back as a positive feedback mechanism due to the albedo and water vapor effects.

In other words, these are all signs pointing to a tipping point being crossed. So, expect more and more of the same.

Is it just me?
Or does that trend line look steady and linear to anyone else?
Where is the sharp " Hockey Stick " upward " Alarming and Unpresedented " accelleration in the melting?
Am I just missing some AGW neuonce here?
Brett: Do you see anything alarming about that graph?

Reply: hard to say, It would be unlikely to see a hockey stick like pattern since we are only talking 19 years of data here. If you had data that went way back, maybe it would look more like the hockey stick, who knows. Maybe what we are seeing in the graph is just the blade and not the stick. I certainly do not know that for sure, however.

GREENLAND......It was named by the viking's because it was GREEN when they settled there. The villages eventually were abandoned because the glaciers CAME to greenland. Come on folks this global warming stuff is rediculous!!!!!!!!

If you read the information in more detail, http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2007/greenland_recordhigh.html, the snowmelt is significant because it changes the reflectivity (albedo) of the surface and makes it more prone to absorbing heat. This particular publication is more relevant to impacts to the surface than it is to volume except in the realm of understanding feedbacks:

"When snow melts at those high altitudes and then refreezes, it can absorb up to four times more energy than fresh, unthawed snow," said Tedesco. "This can affect Earth's energy budget by changing how much radiation from the sun is absorbed by the Earth versus that reflected back into the atmosphere. Refrozen snow can also alter the snow density, thickness and snow-water content." Tedesco's findings were published Sept. 25 in the American Geophysical Union's Eos newspaper.

From the article - ...this year in the lower altitude areas of Greenland, though not record breaking, was indeed 30% higher than average,...

Looking at the melting chart, 1998 was 2.8 US Maps. 1999 was 2.3, 2000 was 1.8 etc.

2007 at 2.2 was slightly below the 10 year average.

Reply: isn't the study using the 19-year average?

I think it was Mark Twain who said that there are 3 kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies and statistics.

What's happening in the Arctic is quite disturbing.

REPLY: Nope, what people like you are spewing is distrubing. Ans has been since the 1960s.

Love and Kisses, As always....

The Denier!

Please keep Greenland temps in perspective. Greenland has COOLED since the 1940's. 80% of man-made CO2 came after that time. Looking at just the last 15 or 20 years of Greenland and then projecting out rates of warming based on short term data is simply bad logic.

Marc: This piece just talks about snow melt, not temperature trends, or are you responding to a particular comment?

From our Senate report just after my return from a trip to Greenland in July:

Research in 2006 found that Greenland has been warming since the 1880�s, but since 1955, temperature averages at Greenland stations have been colder than the period between 1881-1955.

A 2006 study found Greenland has cooled since the 1930's and 1940's, with 1941 being the warmest year on record. Another 2006 study concluded Greenland was as warm or warmer in the 1930�s and 40�s and the rate of warming from 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than the warming from 1995-2005. One 2005 study found Greenland gaining ice in the interior higher elevations and thinning ice at the lower elevations. In addition, the often media promoted fears of Greenland�s ice completely melting and a subsequent catastrophic sea level rise are directly at odds with the latest scientific studies. These studies suggest that the biggest perceived threat to Greenland�s glaciers may be contained in unproven computer models predicting a future catastrophic melt.

Full Report here:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=175B568A-802A-23AD-4C69-9BDD978FB3CD

I am intrigued by Marc Morano's post about Greenland temperature trends. I also know that Patrick henry has mentioned several times before that Greenland is cooling and that the mess of the ice cap is expanding. This seems diametrically opposed to the data presented in this article. Patrick, what sources are you getting your information from? Please note that this is not a confrontational post . I'm just honestly curious. You say that Greenland is cooling ,while others say it is warming, so I want to go to the data.

Thanks

I think the time period to analyze Greenland's Snow Melt should be greatly expanded to really appreciate the significance. The time period should at the very least start around 50 AD. In this way, Eric the Red's discovery of "The Green Land", and the settlement by the Vikings on Greenland can be further analyzed and compared to present day snow melt.

From Greenland's web site, "By the year 1000 the Viking societies numbered some 3,000 inhabitants on 300-400 farms. The Viking society survived for 500 years. The reason for its disappearance remains a great mystery, but a colder climate, conflicts with the Inuit people, European pirates, overgrazing and bouts of plague have all been put forward as possible causes of its demise."

"Inuit cultures at the mercy of Mother Nature
People have lived in Greenland for more than 4500 years, although there have been long periods when the country has been completely uninhabited because conditions made it impossible. This could have been due to a lack of animals to hunt or in the event of a change of climate that made conditions too harsh for survival. Excavations from throughout Greenland and finds of ruins, tools, bones and clothing bear witness to highly developed cultures that immigrated in several separate waves."

Apparently, even back then, there were Climate Changes!!!! We need to know how it became cold again so we can investigate the cause and perhaps incorporate it into our plans to keep the climate from changing. This is one of many reasons why we need to increase the period of analysis much, much more than 19 years!!

The study indicates that at some point during the summer, the covered region got above freezing and experienced some melting.

That doesn't say anything about the net balance during the year. If 30 inches of snow fell (average for the Greenland ice cap) and 1 inch melted - that is a net accumulation.

Conversely, most of Greenland never experiences any melt and is definitely increasing in snow depth.

The time period is too short to make any sense out of trends and this is yet another great example of out of context AGW hysteria. Temperatures in the interior of Greenland have averaged well below 0F this month and not much above 0F for the summer.

Marc,

"Research in 2006 found that Greenland has been warming since the 1880�s, but since 1955, temperature averages at Greenland stations have been colder than the period between 1881-1955[...]"

Not sure what you're trying to prove with all this data. Historically Greenland has been more affected by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) than any global trend. As such, a shift in the NAO could lead to warming on top of the current anthropogenic trend.

"One 2005 study found Greenland gaining ice in the interior higher elevations and thinning ice at the lower elevations."

This is strong validation of global warming, as higher altitudes do not warm to the melting point, but the air does warm enough to hold more water vapor and encourage more snowfall. The same thing is happening with high altitude glaciers and the interior of Antarctica. Climate models have predicted this high altitude ice increase.

However, the importance of this NASA study is that it now appears that the warming is affecting even the high altitudes of the ice sheet, which is yet another troubling sign.

Article is vague at best. I guess AGW'ers want us to believe because this is something that NASA was associated with it must be correct. 19 years of record keeping and it is at an all time high. Here we go again with such small amount of record keeping yet it is at an all time high. This is hard to believe especially seeing how cold parts of Greenland were in the higher altitudes this summer. Summit only had one day above freezing this summer when it hit 34. The rest of the summer was well below freezing. I am thinking due to the fact that they couldn't say it was really warm this year this study is another example of how to keep the hype up. Don't concentrate on the temps just the snow melt. I guess we will now here very soon of how great that snow melt is in Antartica even though ice levels are at an all time high. Even at that I have to laugh at the record keeping because that is only 28 years. Certainly levels were even higher than they are currently.

For those of you who think nuclear power is clean...

http://www.nunnglow.com/

Bullitin:
The prise is not up to $125,000 for anyone that can show proof of the A in AGW.
http://www.ultimateglobalwarmingchallenge.com/entries.htm
Oddly, there are no entrants as of yet.
If you are too shy, send me your proof and I will submit it for you and split the take.
Think of all the carbon Offset Credits your share would buy.
Come on, this is a pile of money! Lets get it.

We had 100 cm of snow in Colorado last year during the December 20 storm. The area of the state is 260,000 km2, which is more than 1/4,000 of the earth. That much snow could be spread over the entire planet to a depth of 0.25mm (about one snowflake.)

Patrick: How long did it take you to figure that one out?

Great topic for a press release - "Colorado single day snow storm big enough to cover the entire earth." The proponents of panic are digging pretty deep with this story.

19 years of data and they're talking about 'records'?

From the article:

"According to Tedesco, melting in April and May of this year in high-altitude areas was very low, but in June melting jumped unexpectedly and led to the record melting index for the year."

There we have it - one warm month led to this. Surprise, surprise - meanwhile the long-term trends are towards cooling, not warming.

Doesn't the AGW crowd always tell us to pay attention to long-term trends and not short-term variability?

Brett,

It probably took me less time to figure than it took them, because the area of Colorado and the earth both show up at the top of a Google search.

The idea of converting volume to area for a press release is a new concept in institutional disinformation. They should get some sort of prize for being creative at least in the "lies, damned lies, and statistics" category.

I've also that heard you can spread an ounce of 24 carat gold over 300 square feet.

Those overlaid graphics of the USA really add scientific rigor to the presentation - and why would anyone fit a line to that series? It looks like a step function to me, with a constant mean for the past decade.

Different part of the globe, but any comments on:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17780 ??

Hey Patrick, according to you, Greenland has been cooler than average and never above freezing during the Summer. I think you were wrong.

Mark, it IS disturbing...

This definitely a warm spell for the shores of Greenland and all of Greenland for that matter. It's no coincidence that these high temperature departures have followed suit these first few days of Fall in New England.

The ice is melting, most of the islands coast is free of thick sea ice which can no longer block the glacial advance so as the surface melt water penetrates the glaciers and lubricate the bulk for its slide into the sea from bed rock, its launch will raise sea levels even before it melts.

This extreme melt will put so many icebergs into the sea all at once; the dangers will make the NWP far too dangerous for shipping.
Next they will announce that the NWP will have to close because of really big icebergs.

You know none of this comes as a surprise, this news is just confirmation, not news but just a running commentary, it is exactly what we were expecting.

If AGW was a myth the Arctic ice would not be collapsing.

Patrick, how much of the world would be covered by the new ice forming in Antarctica?.

Follow the money. Now the logic-free zone at 40N/77W has learned that informing people that snow melts in the summer can evolve into an argument for higher taxes!! WooHoo!!!