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Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt
Posted on 29 July 2012 by Neven
News from NASA regarding the Greenland ice sheet via Neven's Arctic Sea Ice blog. Note that similar Greenland ice sheet melt events have happened in the distant past, but perhaps not quite of this magnitude. On top of the natural influences, we now have the long-term human-caused Greenland ice sheet decline as well.
For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its two-mile-thick center, experienced some degree of melting at its surface, according to measurements from three independent satellites analyzed by NASA and university scientists.
On average in the summer, about half of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet naturally melts. At high elevations, most of that melt water quickly refreezes in place. Near the coast, some of the melt water is retained by the ice sheet and the rest is lost to the ocean. But this year the extent of ice melting at or near the surface jumped dramatically. According to satellite data, an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface thawed at some point in mid-July.
Researchers have not yet determined whether this extensive melt event will affect the overall volume of ice loss this summer and contribute to sea level rise.
"The Greenland ice sheet is a vast area with a varied history of change. This event, combined with other natural but uncommon phenomena, such as the large calving event last week on Petermann Glacier, are part of a complex story," said Tom Wagner, NASA's cryosphere program manager in Washington. "Satellite observations are helping us understand how events like these may relate to one another as well as to the broader climate system."
Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was analyzing radar data from the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Oceansat-2 satellite last week when he noticed that most of Greenland appeared to have undergone surface melting on July 12. Nghiem said, "This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: was this real or was it due to a data error?"
Nghiem consulted with Dorothy Hall at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Hall studies the surface temperature of Greenland using the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. She confirmed that MODIS showed unusually high temperatures and that melt was extensive over the ice sheet surface.
Thomas Mote, a climatologist at the University of Georgia, Athens, Ga; and Marco Tedesco of City University of New York also confirmed the melt seen by Oceansat-2 and MODIS with passive-microwave satellite data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder on a U.S. Air Force meteorological satellite.
The melting spread quickly. Melt maps derived from the three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet's surface had melted. By July 12, 97 percent had melted.
This extreme melt event coincided with an unusually strong ridge of warm air, or a heat dome, over Greenland. The ridge was one of a series that has dominated Greenland's weather since the end of May. "Each successive ridge has been stronger than the previous one," said Mote. This latest heat dome started to move over Greenland on July 8, and then parked itself over the ice sheet about three days later. By July 16, it had begun to dissipate.
Even the area around Summit Station in central Greenland, which at 2 miles above sea level is near the highest point of the ice sheet, showed signs of melting. Such pronounced melting at Summit and across the ice sheet has not occurred since 1889, according to ice cores analyzed by Kaitlin Keegan at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather station at Summit confirmed air temperatures hovered above or within a degree of freezing for several hours July 11-12.
"Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data. "But if we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome."
In the meantime Dr. Jason Box reports on the Meltfactor blog:
Greenland ice sheet record surface melting underway
While the potential impact of wildfires on darkening the Greenland ice sheet surface remain to be resolved, there is mounting evidence of an extreme year 2012 melt.
Melt signatures from active microwave remote sensing are stronger than in recent years over the upper areas of the ice sheet. Dark areas indicate absorption of the microwave signal emitted by the satellite. While, year 2010 and 2011 are recognized as being record melt years (Tedesco et al. 2011, van As et al. 2011), year 2012 melting appears to be more extensive.
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In my recently accepted albedo paper (Box et al. 2012, ACCEPTED VERSION), see abstract, the statement: “it is reasonable to expect 100% melt area over the ice sheet within another similar decade of warming.” may be coming true already.
From ScienceDaily:
Surprising Link Between Ice and Atmosphere: GPS Can Now Measure Ice Melt, Change in Greenland Over Months Rather Than Years
ScienceDaily (July 24, 2012) — Researchers have found a way to use GPS to measure short-term changes in the rate of ice loss on Greenland -- and reveal a surprising link between the ice and the atmosphere above it.
The study, published in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, hints at the potential for GPS to detect many consequences of climate change, including ice loss, the uplift of bedrock, changes in air pressure -- and perhaps even sea level rise.
The team, led by earth scientists at Ohio State University, pinpointed a period in 2010 when high temperatures caused the natural ice flow out to sea to suddenly accelerate, and 100 billion tons of ice melted away from the continent in only 6 months.
They were able to make the measurement because Earth compresses or expands like a spring depending on the weight above it, letting them use the Greenland bedrock like a giant bathroom scale to weigh the ice atop it. As ice accumulates, the bedrock sinks, and as the ice melts away, the bedrock rises.
Measurements revealed that Greenland sank by about 6 mm (about one quarter of an inch) over the winter of 2010, and the researchers determined that half of the sinking (3 mm, or one eighth of an inch) was actually due to high air pressure above the ice, and the other half was due to ice accumulation.
Further, they determined that the bedrock lifted 11 mm (less than half an inch) over the course the summer. Air pressure appeared to affect the bedrock less during this time, so that the bounce-back appears to be mostly due to ice loss.
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While shortening the detection time to six months is a substantial advance, Bevis thinks his team will soon do even better.
"Within the next year or so, we should be able to process the GPS data within a month of its being collected," he said, "and then we can monitor abrupt changes in ice mass only a month or two after they occur."
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Although this study revealed a dramatic six-month period of melting in Greenland in 2010, that short-term ice loss isn't necessarily a sign of a long-term trend, Bevis cautioned.
"It is dangerous to assume that rates observed over even two or three years reflect a long-term trend. Rates are known to change. So, it would be even more dangerous to assume that the record breaking summer of 2010 is the new norm."
"That being said, the summer of 2011 was also very hot. And this summer is starting off hot, too. So, I do expect to see a sustained increase in uplift rates when we compare 2010-2012 to 2007-2009," he added.
Read the whole thing here.
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When one examines the insolation table above, the data shows good evidence that current temps are now forced well above HCO temps relative to available insolation (especially given that temps are a long way from equilibria).
The takeaway I see is that, even at the summit, a very warm year puts the GIS at near-total ablation-zone status. Given the near-unprecedented, anthropogenic-derived warming currently being experienced and yet in the pipeline, coupled with a meandering and increasingly-sticky polar jet, total-melt-zone status will be a regular occurence in the very near future (per Box 2012). Like 2012, 2013...
Just in order to explain us the diverse hypotheses :
- "whether this year's melting is a one off or the start of a trend".
- or even if it could be both : the consequences of an extreme weather pattern (noise) on a continued multi-decadal upwards surface melting (trend).
The warming of the GIS during the 1930's is notably less than that warming being experienced by the GIS today.
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