I figured this was an appropriate place to ask this question. Perhaps there a fields within literature I am unaware of, and this is viewed perhaps from a mass balance/out of the realm possibility by Article climatologists and sea ice specialists.
However, my question in general is this: Antarctica is a large mass of grounded ice surrounded by sea ice where it can seasonally be sustained. One would presume this is a natural thing the ice sheets cause: formation of peripheral sea ice which supports the overall land based ice sheet system in a very broad sense.
In the case of the Arctic, where is such an ice sheet to be found? I suppose there are a few I’ve caps on islands in Svalbard, the CAA, and perhaps some Russian Arctic islands. In large part, however, the literal elephant in the Arctic is Greenland. It has the only real ice sheet type geological formations somewhat like Antarctica, in the Arctic.
Does the amount of fresh minty water, glaciers and other large bergs of ice which get calves off of (or pushed perhaps) Northern Greenland (and Greenlandic shores >80 north in latitude) have a large impact in the existence and overall formation of ice at latitudes greater than 80, 90 degrees? The Artic isn’t a terribly large, deep ocean. Perhaps Greenland “feeds” the CAB and by extension, peripheral Artic seas in such a way that even inputting tons and tons of energy into the system (as we’re doing) isn’t enough to offset the rush of cold water perfectly primed for freezing and or Greenlandic ice into the Arctic Ocean?
Does Greenland act like a whole bunch of ice cubes in an otherwise somewhat closed Artic system, allowing cold conditions and ice to persist longer into the future, in waters we may have presumed would warm?
In the same way the area southeast of Greenland in the Fram strait to the west and southwest of Iceland is one of the few areas expected to drop in temperatures over the coming years (presumably from tons of Greenland melt), wouldn’t largely equivalent amounts of water be likely being shed in the north perhaps where melting seasons are much shorter, and despite rising temps in those coastal areas of Greenland in the north already(~20 deg C in July 2019) mean the water there at best will always hover near freezing, so long as Greenland is shedding ice and fresh, minty water by the gigatons?
Input is greatly appreciated, especially if someone could roughly show me mass balances of those areas and prove to me that oceanic conditions are largely the driver for the existence of the >80 deg polar Arctic ice cap each year.
The onset and relationships between Arctic and Greenlandic melt seasons, are they so easily dismissed and ignored because of very good reasons?
https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2016/ArtMID/5022/ArticleID/277/Greenland-Ice-SheetEven tertiary reading of articles such as above show that the 2012 melt season and following year were crazy in Greenland, almost as if it were feeding its Arctic pal, the sea ice.