Greenland/Baffin Bay - Temps In Upper 30s, Raining; Oh, Ice Sheet May Be More Unstable Than Thought

[hatrack]

Oops.

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Temperature departure from normal. CREDIT: ClimateReanalyzer.org

It’s been unusually warm in the United States in recent days, with records being set across the country. But it’s been scorching in Greenland, with temperatures as much as 54° above normal, which means above freezing in many places.

And this comes on the heels of new research from NASA’s aptly-named Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission, which finds that the enormous ice sheet is far more unstable than we realized. That’s bad news because the Greenland ice sheet contains enough land-locked ice to raise sea levels by over 20 feet.

EDIT

But in a place like Greenland, a monster heat wave this time of year pushes temperatures above freezing. It hit the upper 30s in many coastal towns — with rain forecast in some — which means actual melting over parts of the great ice sheet that should be adding ice right now, not losing it.

As Robert Fanney, a former threat analyst and author of Robert Scribbler’s Blog, explained Monday, this heat wave “will generate brief surface melt conditions for parts of Greenland during late November.” Significantly, a study earlier this month by NASA’s OMG mission looked at the threat from underneath the ice sheet, specifically “how marine glaciers react to the presence of warm, salty Atlantic Water” (see figure below).

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The Geophysical Research Letters study found “new pathways by which AW [Atlantic Waters] can access glaciers with marine-based basins, thereby highlighting sectors of Greenland that are most vulnerable to future oceanic forcing,” which is worsened by global warming. They found that “between 30 and 100% more glaciers are potentially exposed” to Atlantic waters than had been previously thought.

EDIT

https://thinkprogress.org/omg-heat-wave-scorches-greenland-up-to-54f-warmer-than-normal-9981de9c6a92/

[pscot]

1. Muss be sunspots, or somethin'

[steve2470]

2. Global climate change is a hoax!

I swear, these rich fucking Republicans won't do anything about it until the water is lapping at their doorstep or until their seaside home topples into the ocean. And by then, AFAIK, it will be way too late.