Greenland

Whaling commission avoids controversial decisions

Wrapping up its annual meeting this week, the International Whaling Commission decided to defer decision-making on various controversial issues. The IWC took only one vote at the meeting, deciding to disallow Greenland’s request to take a higher quota of humpback whales. It also agreed to research the impact of climate change on cetaceans. But with […]

Greenland can warm 2-4°C in one year

A new article in Science Express (PDF)($ub. req'd), "High-Resolution Greenland Ice Core Data Show Abrupt Climate Change Happens in Few Years," examines, "The last two abrupt warmings at the onset of our present warm interglacial period." The article explores the underlying causes of ...

... abrupt shifts of northern hemisphere atmospheric circulation resulting in 2-4°K changes in Greenland moisture source temperature from one year to the next.

The article concludes that

... polar atmospheric circulation can shift in 1-3 years resulting in decadal to centennial scale changes from cold stadials to warm interstadials/interglacials associated with astounding Greenland temperature changes of 10°K. Neither the magnitude of such shifts nor their abruptnesses are currently captured by state of the art climate models.

The time to act is yesterday.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Glacial melting is accelerating more quickly than projected

Climate change is occurring much faster than the IPCC models project. The Greenland ice sheet is a prime example. Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Ilulissat recently:

We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at two metres an hour on a front 5km [3 miles] long and 1,500 metres deep. That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one year to provide drinking water for a city the size of London for a year.

The glacier's movement is accelerated as water flows down "moulins" (see picture) to the ice-bedrock interface at the bottom and acts as a lubricant for the entire glacier to slide and glide on. This "provides a mechanism for rapid, large-scale, dynamic responses of ice sheets to climate warming," according to research led by NASA and MIT scientists [PDF]. Yet this factor has been given "little or no consideration in estimates of ice-sheet response to climate change."

And at what temperature Greenland’s ice sheet will melt

Climate tipping points have been the subject of much debate and confusion. Now Professor Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia has published a very good piece, "Tipping points in the Earth System," giving some intellectual substance to the notion.

Not surprisingly, the tipping point Prof. Lenton worries about most is the disintegration of Greenland's ice sheet. He told The Guardian:

We know that ice sheets in the last ice age collapsed faster than any current models can capture, so our models are known to be too sluggish.

New island ‘made’ by global warming

In the same week that science discovers a new, earth-like planet, we get a new island off the coast of Greenland. From The Independent:

The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland's enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming.

Yikes.

Overreacts to global warming

Greenland has joined the ranks of the alarmists by hysterically overreacting to global warming. Look, Greenland’s an advocate. I respect that. We just can’t expect it to to accurately reflect the science. Frankly, it lacks credibility.

Au revoir, Greenland

Meanwhile, over at the L.A. Times, we find that the Greenland ice sheet is melting faster than climate models predicted.

Hey, I figure, more freshwater for us! Our grandkids? Eff them.

Polar bears

As if it wasn't enough that the huge reduction in the polar ice cap has caused polar bears to drown at an alarming rate, now tourists can pay to shoot them in Greenland.

Binky, polar bear of tourist chewing fame at the Anchorage Zoo, was just getting in his last licks while he still could ...

Shock and Thaw

New Yorker launches three-part exploration of climate change Writer Elizabeth Kolbert must have single-handedly accelerated global warming with the jet fuel she burned visiting the Arctic, Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, and the Antarctic to research a big three-part series on climate change for The New Yorker. What did she find? Well, it’s all melting. The Alaskan […]