Guardian’s Latest Fake Greenland Meltdown Claims
By Paul Homewood
More alarmist Greenland nonsense, courtesy of the Guardian:
Last year’s summer was so warm that it helped trigger the loss of 600bn tons of ice from Greenland – enough to raise global sea levels by 2.2mm in just two months, new research has found.
The analysis of satellite data has revealed the astounding loss of ice in just a few months of abnormally high temperatures around the northern pole. Last year was the hottest on record for the Arctic, with the annual minimum extent of sea ice in the region its second-lowest on record.
Unlike the retreat of sea ice, the loss of land-based glaciers directly causes the seas to rise, imperilling coastal cities and towns around the world. Scientists have calculated that Greenland’s enormous ice sheet lost an average of 268bn tons of ice between 2002 and 2019 – less than half of what was shed last summer. By contrast, Los Angeles county, which has more than 10 million residents, consumes 1bn tons of water a year.
“We knew this past summer had been particularly warm in Greenland, melting every corner of the ice sheet, but the numbers are enormous,” said Isabella Velicogna, a professor of Earth system science at University of California Irvine and lead author of the new study, which drew upon measurements taken by Nasa’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) satellite mission and its upgraded successor, Grace Follow-On.
Glaciers are melting away around the world due to global heating caused by the human-induced climate crisis. Ice is reflective of sunlight so as it retreats the dark surfaces underneath absorb yet more heat, causing a further acceleration in melting.
Ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, scientists revealed last year, pushing up previous estimates of global sea level rise and putting 400 million people at risk of flooding every year by the end of the century.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/mar/19/greenland-ice-melt-sea-level-rise-climate-crisis
It’s hard to know where to start with this drivel! Let’s start with the claim that 600bn tonnes of ice was lost last summer.
In reality, the Greenland ice sheet gains about 600bn tonnes of ice during winter in a typical year. This ice melts during summer, either directly on the ice sheet (as measured by the Surface Mass Balance – SMB- below) and or via glacier calving. [For those not familiar with the SMB, see my post here.]
http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
It is true that the SMB lost around 200Gt more than average last year, though this was in part to a drier winter, with less snowfall. However, the SMB gained much more ice than usual in the two previous summers, which the study referred to by the Guardian describes as “cold”:
But it gets even worse!
According to NOAA’s Arctic Report card, also linked to by the Guardian, the ice loss from glaciers has virtually been at a standstill since 2012 (Fig C)
(c) Cumulative annual net glacier area change (km2) at seven major marine-terminating glacier outlets of the Greenland ice sheet from 1999/2000 to 2018/19
As a result, the total ice mass loss from Greenland’s ice sheet has slowed considerably in the last few years:
But what about these claims of Arctic heatwaves and “hottest on record”? So much hot air, I am afraid.
At Nuuk, for instance, in SW Greenland where most of the ice melt occurred, temperatures last summer were not exceptionally high. Indeed Nuuk was just as warm in 1888!
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/STATIONS/tmp_GL000004250_15_0_1/station.txt
As for the Arctic as a whole, temperatures were close to average all summer:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
The Guardian gets over more hysterical, in a sign of its desperation:
Glaciers are melting away around the world due to global heating caused by the human-induced climate crisis. Ice is reflective of sunlight so as it retreats the dark surfaces underneath absorb yet more heat, causing a further acceleration in melting
If that was true, perhaps they would care to explain how Greenland could be as warm as now in the 1930s, without triggering further warming? Instead Greenland’s temperatures plummeted between the 1960s and 90s:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show_v4.cgi?id=GL000004250&ds=15&dt=1
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“Last year’s summer was so warm that it helped trigger the loss of 600bn tons of ice from Greenland…”
That key word is, ‘help’. It implies that CC was not the only cause. Mmmmm. I bet there were models.
More ice loss trauma from the bald guy on youtube
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/12/16/global-warming-melting-greenland/
A billion metric tons of ice is 1 gigaton. The equals roughly 0.95 cubic kilometers of water, since ice floats. As calculated in essay Pseudoprecision in ebook Blowing smoke, given the surface area of the oceans one gigaton of ice will raise sea level about 2.8 microns (2.8E-6 meters). So 660 gigatons will raise sea level 1.8mm. Their math is wrong.
Maybe they used NASA’s published 3.65 microns/gigaton. NASA’s math is wrong also. Which was one of the points of the essay.
Nice to see you here, ristvan. Spreading your calm facts and logic in opposition to the pseudo-science of global warming, as always 🙂
The opposite of what the Grauniad claims can invariably be taken to be the truth.
Absolutely 100% accurate statement. Well said Phillip Bratby !
Well it is the Guardian, so why should anyone believe this poorly made comic? (those adults remaining in their childhood?)
Alarmist nonsense? The Guardian? Surely not? Polly Toynbee was at it the other day. We’re all doomed – that sort of thing…
“600bn tonnes of ice during winter in a typical year”
Gains/ loses, the figure sounds enormous but on a world scale even if we assume ‘all things being equal’ which clearly they are not, then adding 600bn tonnes water to the world oceans is piffling, is it not? Indeed, can the graun furnish us with some guestimate of the amount of water evaporated off the ocean surface, in half a day say?
And we note 600 billion tonnes – compared with the mass of the Greenland ice cap, it sure ain’t going anywhere, at least anywhere quickly – is it?
My calculations says 1.63 mm rise during the summer melt, no 2.2
And, during the winter that 1.63 mm and probably more, will return as ice and snow.
THEREFORE – A NET GAIN IN ICE, NOT A LOSS !!!
An ice age is more worrisome for food production than a rise in CO2 levels.
No sea level data presented.
‘enough to raise global sea levels by 2.2mm in just two months’
A “begging the question” fallacy. Guardian’s incurious journalist is just a stenographer for marginal scientists.
And “peer review” fails to notice base fallacy.
The BBC is in its element, pushing one scare after another at the moment. They have been revelling in hyping the virus and using it to push the climate again. Pity their pushers aren’t self-isolating.
I can’t find anything on the web, rather than an anomaly graph, it would be interesting to see a graph of the mass change of the Greenland ice sheet, since say 2000, in absolute terms i.e. as a proportion of the total mass.
I’m guessing there wouldn’t be much to see.
“I’m guessing there wouldn’t be much to see.”
That’s why you use anomaly graphs…to make something out of nothing; it’s all part of the statistical conjuring show.
Well, let’ see, 2.2mm = 0.0866142 ” (inches). WOW !?!? We are gonna drown. It will be ANOTHER 40 days and 40 nights of invisible land mass?!?! Where’s Noah and his Ark !?!?
Everybody needs to get a grip. Regards, retired engineer, physicist, astronomer and petroleum geologist, A REAL SCIENTIST.
Off target but I was amused and appalled by an article in the DT today (2 Apr) “Welcome to the Antarctic jungle”, p14. The article reports findings indicating a temperate jungle in Antarctica 90 million years ago and goes on to suggest that the World was so much warmer and therefore CO2 levels must have been much higher. We have, of course, known of dinosaur fossils of similar age in Antarctica all my life so the reported discovery is nothing remarkable and, of course, Antarctica was not at the South Pole 90 million years ago. It is not at all surprising that there was temperate jungle there – why on earth would anyone sensible seek to invoke CO2 to explain that? I would like to believe it is over specialisation that led the author to overlook continental drift but cannot avoid suspicion of some other agenda…
Well, lets see. 2.2mm = a whopping 0.0866 inches, or 0.0072 feet, or …. oh well you get my drift. Not to worry though, Florida, LA/SD/SF beaches are NOT Threatened. The Obamas don’t have to sell their new beach front vacation home in Martha’s vineyard. You’re welcome.
Regards, a wise old Fart and retired engineer, physicist, astronomer and petroleum geologist, A REAL SCIENTIST.