Remember last month when NASA described an “extraordinary” melt across 97 percent of the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet? Caused a big furor, people bugged out?
It’s actually worse than that. From City College of New York:
Melting over the Greenland ice sheet shattered the seasonal record on August 8 — a full four weeks before the close of the melting season, reports Marco Tedesco, assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at The City College of New York.
The melting season in Greenland usually lasts from June – when the first puddles of meltwater appear – to early-September, when temperatures cool. This year, cumulative melting in the first week in August had already exceeded the record of 2010, taken over a full season, according to Professor Tedesco’s ongoing analysis. …
This spells a change for the face of southern Greenland, he added, with the ice sheet thinning at its edges and lakes on top of glaciers proliferating.
Professor Tedesco noted that these changes jibe with what most of the models predict – the difference is how quickly this seems to be happening.
Melting ice in Greenland. (Photo by Christine Zenino.)
The July melting that NASA reported quickly refroze, Tedesco notes. The melt described by the new research represents water that actually entered the ocean, affecting (however slightly) sea levels.
This year, Greenland experienced extreme melting in nearly every region — the west, northwest and northeast of the continent — but especially at high elevations. In most years, the ice and snow at high elevations in southern Greenland melt for a few days at most. This year it has already gone on for two months.
Point being: If you’re looking for oil and minerals, hurry up. In a thawing Greenland, the rush is on.
