What's new in Greenland?

[morganism]

(Offsite write up on an AGU paper. Greenland glaciers slipping, and not due to mud. also a lot of biomass trapped below. Methane.)

The Greenland Ice Sheet is close to a melting point of no return, warns the AGU

(...)
Methane beneath the Greenland ice sheet to intensify climate warming, scientists warn. A unique project to access the ice-sheet bed hopes to expose the scale of the danger.

Interesting photos and quotes from Elizaveta Vereykina of the Barents Observer on an ongoing study to determine how much methane from vegetation is under the Greenland Ice Sheet. The study area is a small outlet glacier, Isunguata Sermia,  that shows evidence of methane from below the ice margin.

The Greenland ice sheet is the biggest contributor to global sea level rise at the moment. And it’s set to accelerate. So we need to understand how fast that is happening. It already looks like it will be a problem for low-lying coastal regions around the planet in the next 80 years”, Alun Hubbard - Professor of Glaciology at UiT, told the Barents Observer.

When glaciers advanced in the past, they buried vegetation and soil, trapping organic carbon beneath the ice. Over time, microbes may have transformed this carbon into greenhouse gases”, expedition member Petra Klimova, microbiologist from Charles University in Prague, told The Barents Observer.

The preliminary seismic data we collected seems to confirm our suspicions that layers of sediment are lying under the ice here - more than 150 metres thick in fact -  and importantly the potential envrionment for methane production that we have been on the hunt for”,  explained Henry Patton.

(snip)

In a new study, published April 5 in Geophysical Research Letters, the authors concluded that the one important factor influencing the speed of a sliding glacier in southwest Greenland was how quickly water pressure changed within cavities at the base of the ice where meltwater met bedrock.

“Even if the cavities are small, as long as the pressure is ramping up very fast, they will make the ice slide faster,” said Dr. Laurence C. Smith, a professor of environmental studies and Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

It’s the first time observations directly from field research show how changes in the volume of water under the Greenland Ice Sheet drive the flow velocities of a glacier.

The findings contradict a long-held view about ice sliding velocities and water stored under a glacier known as steady-state basal sliding law, which has helped scientists predict how fast ice sheets will slide based on the total volume of water underneath the ice."

(snip)

"That's the kicker. The Greenland Ice Sheet is happily sliding over a surface that theory says it shouldn't be able to rapidly slide over," Humphrey says. "What's important is that, because of this, you get a lot of ice to the oceans or low altitudes where it can melt really fast. It's like a lump of molasses sliding off the continent. It just doesn't melt. It slides toward the ocean."

"Our measurements of sliding-dominated flow over a hard bed in a slow-moving region were quite surprising because people don't typically associate these regions with high sliding," Maier adds. "Generally, people associate lots of sliding motion with regions that have soft beds (mud) or exceptionally high-sliding velocities, such as ice streams. Yet, in this relatively boring region, we found the highest fraction of sliding measured to date."


https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/19/2159788/-The-Greenland-ice-sheet-is-past-the-point-of-saving-warns-the-AGU


Multistability and Transient Response of the Greenland Ice Sheet to Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022GL101827

[P-maker]

DMI today launched the news that a remarkable new temperature record has been beaten at the Summit Station in Greenland. July temperatures were 2C above previous record high and seasonal average more than 4C above provisional normals. More details here ( in Danish ): https://www.dmi.dk/nyheder/2023/varmerekorder-pa-indlandsisen/ - and further references towards the end of the article.

[NotaDenier]

DMI today launched the news that a remarkable new temperature record has been beaten at the Summit Station in Greenland. July temperatures were 2C above previous record high and seasonal average more than 4C above provisional normals. More details here ( in Danish ): https://www.dmi.dk/nyheder/2023/varmerekorder-pa-indlandsisen/ - and further references towards the end of the article.

The summer in Greenland 2023 was very hot and marked by unusually high temperatures. Most notably, DMI recorded a hot record at Summit Camp in July. July 2023 registered with the absolute warmest monthly average at the top of the Inland Ice Sheet. The average temperature was -7.3 °C, which is almost 2 °C warmer than the previous record from 2012 of -9.2 °C.

The climate normal, i.e. the average temperature in July in the period 1991-2020, is -11.7 °C. The distance from the climate normal to the summer's record at Summit was thus a whopping 4.4 °C.

The 'lukewarm' weather in the middle of the Ice Cap continued into August - albeit with not much speed. In August, the average temperature at Summit camp ended up setting a 'small' record of -11.3 °C. It is a small 0.3 °C more than the previous record of 11.6 °C, and 4.3 °C higher than the climate normal of -15.6 °C.

SUMMIT CAMP
Average temperature Record climate normal
(1991-2020)
June -10.4 °C (2012) -14.0 °C
July -7.3 °C (2023) -11.7 °C
August -11.3 °C (2023) 15.6 °C
All summer -10.4 °C (2023) -13.8 °C
The total Summit record for all three summer months was quite large. The average temperature ended up at –10.4 °C, which is 1.0 °C warmer than the old record and 3.4 °C higher than the climate normal (–13.8 °C). 1 °C doesn't sound like much, but a large part of the contribution came from the record-warm July.

- Summit Station has experienced a very hot summer in 2023, and several mechanisms are behind this. Although the Atlantic Ocean is very far from the highest point of the Ice Inland, large high pressure and low pressure have dominated the weather from the USA, across the Atlantic and to Europe with many extreme records resulting in the middle of the summer. The same distribution of high pressure and low pressure, combined with record-warm surface water in the Atlantic Ocean, has sent very warm and moist air up towards Greenland – all the way to Summit Camp. The very stuck situation broke in August, and a large high pressure established itself over the ice. The high pressure above the ice and warm air means greater melting of 'fresh snow'. When new snow melts, the surface becomes darker and more susceptible to the sun's rays. So part of the heat that flowed up over Greenland in July has left its mark and made August also be on the warm side, says Martin Stendel, climate researcher at the National Center for Climate Research at DMI.

Summit Camp was far from the only place in the Northern Hemisphere to experience extreme temperatures during the summer months. Prolonged heat waves took hold both in Southern Europe and in large areas of the USA, and as mentioned, the North Atlantic was record warm – a consequence of the very locked-in weather system that prevailed for a long time in the middle of summer.

According to Martin Stendel, the locked weather systems often have serious consequences for nature, animals and people, which is being researched from a climate angle.

- The summer of 2023 was extreme in many respects, both in terms of heat records and violent rainfall events. Summit is far away from all civilization in the middle of the kilometer high ice cap. It emphasizes that these locked-in systems have a very long reach and great impact. That is why we at the National Center for Climate Research are researching whether locked-in systems will be made easier to emerge in a future global warmer climate – just as a large group of international climate researchers are doing, says Martin Stendel and concludes:

- There is a possible connection between climate change and blockages. The Arctic is warming much more strongly than the global average. In other words, the temperature difference between the Arctic and regions further south is getting smaller. A number of studies show that it can make the flow in the atmosphere more 'wavy', and the stuck systems become easier to arise. However, it is still uncertain where, in which seasons and how much this effect will play out in a gradually warmer climate.

However, a new study from a group of American researchers indicates that there may be a connection between snow cover in North America and the summer weather in Greenland. The study* is published in the trade journal 'Nature Communications'.

Martin Stendel elaborates:
- The study shows that a lack of snow cover in the spring in North America favors the formation of high pressure over Greenland and in this way contributes to promoting locked weather systems. More frequent or longer-lasting blockages that also promote heat waves, heat records and droughts, but also very heavy rain.

Climate norms
Whether the temperatures are normal or unusual in the eyes of climatologists is not a subjective assessment.

Every month, every season and every year, the weather in Greenland, and for that matter also in Denmark, improves. How hot has it been and how much precipitation has fallen?

Based on these calculations, the Greenlandic climate is described as an average of the weather within 30-year periods, the climate normals.

In order to understand the weather observations that tick in every month, DMI's climatologists use climate norms as context – past weather is used to understand the present.

[oren]

Amazing that 2023 surpassed the summer temps of 2012. And by a huge margin too. 2012 was a monster melting season in Greenland.

[kassy]

That does tie in somewhere with global and Atlantic temperatures being at a record high. So next year it should repeat.

[Mr. Ä]

There was a landslide and a "megatsunami" in eastern Greenland. Details in video.

[Mr. Ä]

More info about the tsunami https://polarjournal.ch/en/2023/09/22/mysterious-tsunami-hits-station-in-east-greenland/

[oren]

Here's another article, in Danish.
https://www.soefart.dk/article/view/1053357

On Tuesday 19 September, the Arctic Command flew over Ella Ø and Dickson Fjord with the command's Challenger aircraft. The Arctic Command did this because on Sunday 17 September they were contacted by a former employee of the Sirius patrol, who was on board the cruise ship Ocean Albatros, and which was sailing in the area around Ella Ø. This is what the Arctic Command says on Facebook .

The former Sirius patrol employee did not think that the conditions on Ella Ø and the Sirius station looked as they should.

During the subsequent overflight, the Arctic Command was able to ascertain that a mountain had fallen into the fjord, and it had initiated a tsunami in Dickson Fjord, which had hit Ella Ø.

There were no injuries from the tsunami, but the tsunami waves had washed material from a Sirius patrol station into the fjord.

The inspection ship 'Knud Rasmussen' has helped with the clean-up on Ella Ø, and the reason the inspection ship was able to do so was a stroke of luck. 'Knud Rasmussen' was in the area because the ship had helped another known to Søfart's readers – the cruise ship that ran aground in Alpefjord.

The Sirius patrol has also been busy with the clean-up. It has all been happily completed, and the inspection ship 'Knud Rasmussen' is on its way.

The estimate of a 330-foot tsunami seems unreliable. I'd appreciate if anyone had the patience to listen carefully to all the video and understand how it came by this number.
In general, videos are usually a bad source for reliable information.

[Phil.]

I listened to the video but there was no indication where the 100m estimate came from, possibly they worked back from the extent of the damage downstream?  The report indicated that the wave had travelled 50m inland at the site of the village at which point I think it was ~7m high according to the video report.

[opensheart]

In July, Bierman and an international team of fellow scientists published a study in the journal Science that attracted worldwide media attention. Their research had determined that northern Greenland was ice-free as recently as 418,000 years ago, at a time when the Earth's climate was in a warming period

https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/uvm-scientists-unearth-bad-news-for-our-climate-future-beneath-the-greenland-ice-sheet/Content?oid=39281796

[kassy]

That is a nice complete version of the story.
The implications are of course less nice...

[John_the_Younger]

That article ends:

"It's only a matter of time before this camp begins to surface," Bierman said, "and all that shit is going to [see] daylight."

Bierman meant it literally. In addition to tons of low-level nuclear waste, PCBs, asbestos and lead, the 200 military personnel stationed at Camp Century left behind six years of human waste.

I'm sure there are biologists eager to get their grubby hands (well, scientific instruments, anyway) into that human waste as it has been in deep freeze since 1967.

[kassy]

Maybe but this is so much more important:

As Bierman explained, we now know that 418,000 years ago the Greenland ice sheet vanished during a period when the Earth was as warm as it is today. But unlike today's climate, that warming period was caused by a natural wobble in the Earth's solar orbit — and the change in climate took 20,000 years. By comparison, much of the current warming in the Earth's average temperature began at the start of the Industrial Age, just two centuries ago.

This is another hint that the Earth system is much more sensitive then we figured.
We thought there was ice there at the time but there was not and we only found out via this ´cover up ice core´.

[vox_mundi]

Ice Sheet Surface Melt Is Accelerating In Greenland and Slowing In Antarctica, Finds Study
https://phys.org/news/2023-10-ice-sheet-surface-greenland-antarctica.html



Surface ice in Greenland has been melting at an increasing rate in recent decades, while the trend in Antarctica has moved in the opposite direction, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine and Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

For a paper published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists studied the role of Foehn and katabatic winds, downslope gusts that bring warm, dry air into contact with the tops of glaciers. They said that melting of the Greenland ice sheet related to these winds has gone up by more than 10% in the past 20 years; the impact of the winds on the Antarctic ice sheet has decreased by 32%.

While the impact of the winds is substantial, he said, the distinct behaviors of global warming in the Northern and Southern hemispheres are causing contrasting outcomes in the regions.

In Greenland, wind-driven surface melt is compounded by the massive island "becoming so warm that sunlight alone (without wind) is enough to melt it," according to Zender. The 10% growth in wind-driven melt combined with warmer surface air temperatures has resulted in a 34% increase in total surface ice melt. He attributes this outcome in part to the influence of global warming on the North Atlantic Oscillation, an index of sea level pressure difference. The shifting of NAO to a positive phase has led to below-normal pressure across high latitudes, ushering warm air over Greenland and other Arctic areas.

The authors found that in contrast with Greenland, total Antarctic surface melt has decreased by about 15% since 2000. The bad news is that this reduction is largely due to 32% less downslope wind-generated melt on the Antarctic Peninsula, where two vulnerable ice shelves have already collapsed. Zender said it's fortunate that the Antarctic stratospheric ozone hole discovered in the 1980s continues to recover, which temporarily helps to insulate the surface from further melt.

Matthew K. Laffin et al, Wind‐Associated Melt Trends and Contrasts Between the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets, Geophysical Research Letters (2023).
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GL102828

[kassy]

In Greenland, wind-driven surface melt is compounded by the massive island "becoming so warm that sunlight alone (without wind) is enough to melt it,"

That is a new tipping point? Or just new data showing we crossed that point? It will happen more and more in the future and as the ice sheet lowers the top will be in warmer air.

[oren]

(a) Time series of annual surface melt associated with downslope winds on the GIS from 1961 to 2019. (b) Time series of annual surface melt associated with downslope winds on the Antarctic ice sheets from 1981 to 2019.

[kassy]

What will happen to the Greenland ice sheet if we miss our global warming targets

t’s hard to overstate how crucial Greenland, and its kilometres-thick ice layer, is to climate change. If all that ice melted, the sea would rise by about seven metres – the height of a house.

But what happens if we fail to limit warming to 1.5°C (as looks increasingly likely)? And what happens if we do subsequently manage to rectify that “overshoot” and bring temperatures back down? A team of researchers writing in the journal Nature have now published a study exploring these questions.

In a nutshell, their work shows the worst case scenario of ice sheet collapse and consequent sea-level rise can be avoided – and even partly reversed – if we manage to reduce the global temperatures projected for after 2100. Moreover, the lower and sooner those temperatures fall, the more chance there is of minimising that ice melt and sea-level rise.

We already know that the Greenland ice sheet is losing more than 300 billion cubic metres of ice per year, currently driving global sea levels up by a little less than a millimetre per year. One major worry is that further warming could cross critical thresholds, sometimes referred to as “tipping points”. For example, as the air warms more ice will melt, lowering the elevation of the ice surface and hence exposing it to warmer air temperatures and more melting – even without continued atmospheric warming.

Although far more complex and nuanced in reality, it is feedback processes such as this which dictate that global warming be limited to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in order to avoid catastrophes, such as wholescale ice-sheet collapse.

How to simulate a huge ice sheet in a computer
It is critically important that we are able to predict how the Greenland ice sheet will respond to future warming. To achieve this, researchers generally use computer models of ice motion. In essence, these divide the ice sheet into tens of thousands of 3D segments and apply physical laws of ice motion to compute how each segment changes over thousands of individual time steps, factoring in things like anticipated climatic change, ice thickness, ice slope and the temperature of the ice interior and ice base.

...

In the face of such challenges, a team of researchers led by Nils Bochow of the Arctic University in Norway have published their new study. They ran two independent state-of-the-art computer programs that were able to simulate how the Greenland ice sheet would respond to various possible levels of global warming, over tens of thousands of years. To mimic the effects of overshooting the critical 1.5°C threshold, they include a gradual warming trajectory to a “peak” temperature, followed by a period during which temperature stabilises to a generally lower final “convergence temperature”.

Good news and bad news

The results are fascinating. If temperatures peak at 2°C or so, and remain there, then the models – as expected – predict substantial ice sheet collapse after several thousands of years.

...

However, things change if warming is seriously mitigated post-2100. In those models, inertia in the ice sheet’s response – a bit like the time it takes for a ripple to settle down as it passes across a pond – means that an overshoot is at least partly reversible as long as temperatures are quickly brought back down.

For example, if temperature stabilises by the year 2200 at less than 1.5°C of warming, then the ice sheet should remain smaller than at present, but stable. This is the case irrespective of how far (within reason) peak temperatures overshot 1.5°C in the year 2100. In such cases the sea rise would likely be restricted to a metre or so.

However, such a recovery becomes impossible if it takes too long to get temperatures down or if the convergence temperature remains too high. In those scenarios, ice-sheet collapse and substantial sea-level rise become all but inevitable.

Perhaps the very worst can be avoided then, if we continue to work to reduce global temperatures right through this century and next. Although heartening to some degree, these projections are subject to substantial uncertainty and there is more work to do. In this regard, the authors are at pains to note that their results are not necessarily specific predictions but rather provide insight into possible pathways.

https://theconversation.com/what-will-happen-to-the-greenland-ice-sheet-if-we-miss-our-global-warming-targets-215928

OA paper:

Overshooting the critical threshold for the Greenland ice sheet
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06503-9

Key question: would those state of the art models include this:

In Greenland, wind-driven surface melt is compounded by the massive island "becoming so warm that sunlight alone (without wind) is enough to melt it,"

Or if it is in would that be at a correct level?

What matters more for us is how much the runoff/SLR will increase over the next few decades.

[sidd]

Millan et al. on iceshelves in N. Greenland: doi:10.1038/s41467-023-42198-2

"basal melting rivals the highest rates observed in the Amundsen sea Embayment of Antarctica"

"Currently, the eastern section of the GL [grounding line] of Ryder stabilized on a prograde bedslope grounded at 700 m below sea level (Fig. S18). The western part is however sitting on top of a deep retrograde bed at −400 m, which deepens over the next 6 km to −740 m. For 79 N, the central part of the GL is at −520 m and sitting on top of a downsloping bedrock that goes down to −640 m over a distance of 4 km (Fig. S18). A similar setting has recently been reported for Petermann[Ref. 18], which could face a retreat of another 8 km before the GL stabilizes (Fig. S18)."

open access, read all about it:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42198-2

sidd

[oren]

Thanks for the article.

Here's an image from it, showing the calving front evolution of the 8 glaciers examined, as well as grounding lines and volume change.
Click to enlarge.



Changes in ice shelf frontal and grounding line position between 1990 and present (a–h). Ice flow velocity (source:4) is color coded on a linear color scale and overlaid on a shaded version of the digital elevation model from Bedmachine v312 (a–h). i Location of all ice shelves in North Greenland with their maximum extent over the study period. Partitioning is shown as bar plot for the period 2001–2021, with Surface Mass Balance (SMB) in blue, basal melting in black and calving in green. The total cumulative mass budget for each ice shelves is noted on the bar plot in Gt (negative for mass loss). FA/GR indicates positive ice shelf mass change from calving, which is typically found when floating area increase with grounding line retreat (GR) or ice front advance (FA, see Methods). Ice shelves colors correspond to the percentage of volume change since 1978. Flux gates from6 are shown as dotted light green lines. No grounding lines are available in 1997–2010.

[Espen]

Thanks for the article.

Here's an image from it, showing the calving front evolution of the 8 glaciers examined, as well as grounding lines and volume change.
Click to enlarge.



Changes in ice shelf frontal and grounding line position between 1990 and present (a–h). Ice flow velocity (source:4) is color coded on a linear color scale and overlaid on a shaded version of the digital elevation model from Bedmachine v312 (a–h). i Location of all ice shelves in North Greenland with their maximum extent over the study period. Partitioning is shown as bar plot for the period 2001–2021, with Surface Mass Balance (SMB) in blue, basal melting in black and calving in green. The total cumulative mass budget for each ice shelves is noted on the bar plot in Gt (negative for mass loss). FA/GR indicates positive ice shelf mass change from calving, which is typically found when floating area increase with grounding line retreat (GR) or ice front advance (FA, see Methods). Ice shelves colors correspond to the percentage of volume change since 1978. Flux gates from6 are shown as dotted light green lines. No grounding lines are available in 1997–2010.

What can I say, I reported those losses over quite a few years now, so what is the news?

[kassy]

The fact that there is now an article in Nature about it with probably more details for those interested?

[Espen]

The fact that there is now an article in Nature about it with probably more details for those interested?

"Details" You mean those Mickey Mouse graphics?

[Juan C. García]

What can I say, I reported those losses over quite a few years now, so what is the news?

The fact that there is now an article in Nature about it with probably more details for those interested?

"Details" You mean those Mickey Mouse graphics?

Hi Espen.

In this Forum there are scientists and there are also amateurs. I would say that we both belong to the amateur group. So, we've been saying things that have come true, but we don't get the credit because we're amateurs.

I could say that life is like that. Period! But that's not true. Maybe we should ask ourselves if we have been doing enough. An idea could be to organize our ideas and write a book. Convince a publisher to publish it. Then we will stop being just amateurs writing in ASIF and we will become a person recognized for our work.

What do you think? All of you?

P.S. Maybe you have done that and I don't know it. But I feel that I should do more...

[Espen]

What can I say, I reported those losses over quite a few years now, so what is the news?

The fact that there is now an article in Nature about it with probably more details for those interested?

"Details" You mean those Mickey Mouse graphics?

Hi Espen.

In this Forum there are scientists and there are also amateurs. I would say that we both belong to the amateur group. So, we've been saying things that have come true, but we don't get the credit because we're amateurs.

I could say that life is like that. Period! But that's not true. Maybe we should ask ourselves if we have been doing enough. An idea could be to organize our ideas and write a book. Convince a publisher to publish it. Then we will stop being just amateurs writing in ASIF and we will become a person recognized for our work.

What do you think? All of you?

P.S. Maybe you have done that and I don't know it. But I feel that I should do more...

Yes, there is a lot of copy paste research / "science" around Arctic conditions, I have experienced it quite a few times where I and others from the Forum "inspired" science trophy hunters.
Zachariae Isstrøm: Comes to mind

None forgotten none mentioned!

[Richard Rathbone]

This reminds me of Tom Lehrer on plagiarism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobachevsky_(song)



Plagiarize, plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes

(but be sure to call it "research")

[VeliAlbertKallio]

Back in 2005 when I launched Frozen Isthmuses Protection Campaign of the Arctic Ocean and North Atlantic Ocean (FIPC) people thought that the Arctic Sea ice would still go on decades and even centuries. At World Water Week in August 2006 I gave presentation that the Arctic would see a near imminent loss of sea ice. Only one who agreed was Russian government and Professor Viktor Dukhovny who came to see our poster and agree with our conclusions. Then in the following year's meeting as things had gone just our way, I was invited to be speaker for the press for RSE VII Symposium alongside then-to-become Barack Obama's science advisor on oceans and atmosphere, Jane Lubchenko, and the Arctic Council's "Arctic Impact" report lead author Robert Correll.

I have since then been delighted very much abut the improved sea ice modelling observations that have greatly become more understood - still with very high variability to frustrate any guesswork, but basically still to be more understood than the pre-2007 way of thinking. At one point we called cockroaches Icesat team of indicating some multiyear ice something that we had seen in aerial photos as just recently formed but packed ice. Those things have been smoothened out and corrected.

People leech out of ideas and take credit for themselves. Part of reason is competition for grants and personal career advancement in which plagiarism and lack of courtesy of giving acknowlegments is part of play. Just think about the Bruckner's group: the Argentinean Antarctic research community stationed beside Larsen A ice shelf right when it collapsed in front of their noses with huger roar, leading to fears of tsunami and landslip of the base. It took from 1995 until July 2012 before their observations made way into English-speaking science papers: That was a whopping 17 years' delay on descriptions of the site what had been observed in situ, with no credit and voice given to the mainly Spanish-speaking Antarctic communities of the ABC countries that have strong presence there. The publications promoted instead remote observations by Americans and Europeans with no mention to the ABC countries (Argentine, Bolivia and Chile) and their glaciological communities.

The above delay - at that point of time 12 years in 2007 - was part of the reason why President Michele Bachelet raised the concern of the US/EU academic publishers disinterest on the matters at the UN General Assembly to UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon who then subsequently conducted his own due diligence reporting going to Antarctica in person and then reporting back to the United Nations. As a result, the Chilean Antarctic community's voices were published on Ban ki-Moon's return from the Antarctic station on the question, but due to pressure, soon again "sanitised" (in other words "diluted" to the diplomatically more "correct" academic opinions by the Northern Hemisphere Academia). If UN Secretary-general can be censored, how much hidden censorship there is reserved for the more mortals amongst us? In the end Mother Nature will have her own independent will and no manipulation can change that fact in whatever print and Occams razor it is claimed to be treated.

And if you think that there isn't any serious skeletons in the UN cup-board, just wait and see what will happen to Greenland Ice Sheet as soon as the Arctic Ocean becomes seasonally ice free. We have been working on this matter since 1992 when UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar authorised an another similar matter which we are still working on after some 32 years and still tying up loose end bits and withholding information that long due to reactions feared. (The main trouble here lies over the gold standard of all dating, namely radiocarbon, methane clathrate derived carbon cycles of the Pleistocene rich in carbon-12 from depressurised seabeds, and slow deposition of that by the rock weathering, and then the problem of Holocene Thermal Optimum = Arctic Permafrost Melting Maximum (as yet another process releasing back into air ancient carbon).

What can I say, I reported those losses over quite a few years now, so what is the news?

The fact that there is now an article in Nature about it with probably more details for those interested?

"Details" You mean those Mickey Mouse graphics?

Hi Espen.

In this Forum there are scientists and there are also amateurs. I would say that we both belong to the amateur group. So, we've been saying things that have come true, but we don't get the credit because we're amateurs.

I could say that life is like that. Period! But that's not true. Maybe we should ask ourselves if we have been doing enough. An idea could be to organize our ideas and write a book. Convince a publisher to publish it. Then we will stop being just amateurs writing in ASIF and we will become a person recognized for our work.

What do you think? All of you?

P.S. Maybe you have done that and I don't know it. But I feel that I should do more...

Yes, there is a lot of copy paste research / "science" around Arctic conditions, I have experienced it quite a few times where I and others from the Forum "inspired" science trophy hunters.
Zachariae Isstrøm: Comes to mind

None forgotten none mentioned!

[Espen]

Thanks!!

None forgotten none mentioned!

[NotaDenier]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01855-6

Peripheral glaciers and ice caps (GICs) that are distinct from the Greenland Ice Sheet constitute just ∼4% of Greenland’s total glaciated area but contribute a disproportionally large portion (∼14%) of the island’s current ice loss1. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Greenland’s GICs lost mass at a rate of –35.5 ± 5.8 Gt per year, a rate outpaced only by Alaskan GICs2. However, before the satellite era, measurements of fluctuations in Greenland’s GICs remain sparse3,4,5. Thus, there is only very limited long-term, century- or longer-scale, context for recent loss3,4,5.

Beginning in the 1930s, Denmark’s extensive mapping efforts in Greenland led to the collection of >200,000 aerial photographs covering the island’s coast. The recent rediscovery of this collection, along with photos obtained by the US military during World War II and Cold War eras, has provided invaluable pre-satellite era GIC observations3,4. In this Brief Communication, we combine these twentieth-century historical photos with satellite imagery to extend the limited time frame of GIC records across several regions in Greenland, thus placing their contemporary retreat into a lengthened temporal context. Specifically, we map the ice front positions of 821 glaciers in South, North and West Greenland since the mid-twentieth century and extend to present (2021) 364 existing records of GIC length change that begin in the early to mid-twentieth century from the Southeast4, Northwest and Northeast3 (Fig. 1, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Figs. 5–11). This work thereby more than doubles the number of GICs in Greenland with detailed air photo-based twentieth-century records of length fluctuations from ∼500 (refs. 3,4,5) to ∼1,320. To further extend the records, we also document ice extents based on geomorphic evidence in South and West Greenland during the Little Ice Age (LIA) maximum (ca. ∼1890–1900)6,7,8. Finally, we assess GIC response to changes in climate by comparing regional frontal change rates with long-term (1784–2020) meteorological station records9, as well as catchment-specific climate and surface mass balance (SMB) output from the Modèle Atmosphérique Régional (MAR) regional climate model10 (Figs. 1 and 2, Supplementary Table 2 and Supplementary Fig. 15). Together, these records of frontal variations capture regional changes in climate and GIC mass balance over ∼130 years. We focus our study on GICs that terminate on land and that are distinct from the ice sheet (that is, physically detached or dynamically disconnected; Methods). These GICs are fed by local precipitation, are primarily sensitive to atmospheric climate variability, and respond quickly to climate shifts3,11.

[Espen]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01855-6

The recent rediscovery of this collection, along with photos obtained by the US military during World War II and Cold War eras.

Rediscovered? I was denied access to this colllection about 2 years ago?

[vox_mundi]

Greenland Startup Begins Shipping Glacier Ice to Cocktail Bars In the UAE
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/09/greenland-startup-shipping-glacier-ice-cocktail-bars-uae-arctic-ice

Drinking a cocktail on top of a Dubai skyscraper may seem decadent enough, but a Greenland entrepreneur wants to add ancient glacier ice scooped from the fjords to the glass, for the ultimate international thrill.

Arctic Ice harvests ice from the fjords of Greenland, and then ships them to the United Arab Emirates to sell to exclusive bars. Using glacial ice in drinks is a common practice in Greenland, and, over the years, several entrepreneurs have unsuccessfully attempted to export it. Its co-founder Malik V Rasmussen said the ice, which has been compressed over millennia, is completely without bubbles and melts more slowly than regular ice. It is also purer than the frozen mineral water usually used in Dubai’s ice cubes.

https://arcticice.ae/

According to the company’s website: “Arctic Ice is sourced directly from the natural glaciers in the Arctic which have been in a frozen state for more than 100,000 years. These parts of the ice sheets have not been in contact with any soils or contaminated by pollutants produced by human activities. This makes Arctic Ice the cleanest H20 on Earth.”

[morganism]

(not sure bout this one, 20% more ice loss than prev modeled?)

Measuring Greenland’s Ice Loss

(...)
In a recent study, using 36,328 manually-derived and artificial intelligence (AI)-derived observations based on different data sets of glacier terminus positions collected from 1985 to 2022, researchers were able to generate 120-meter-resolution ice-sheet projections for Greenland.
Greenland’s ice lost is 20% more than previously thought

Based on this, researchers estimate the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) has lost 5,091 ± 72 km2 in area, which is 1,034 ± 120 gigatonnes of ice that has calved and melted away. Most estimates today on ice loss have been looking at the thinning of ice in glaciers, while not focusing as much on the historical calving and receding extent of ice. Combining the two, estimating the receding and thinning of ice, researchers now believe Greenland’s ice lost is about 20% more than current estimates.

To derive the results, researchers used cleaned data from different sources. This included 3,437 glacier terminus positions from the MEaSUREs Annual v2[2] from 1985 and 21,990 weekly to monthly terminus positions which derive fromSentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar since January 2015. The CALFIN dataset provides 19,665 data points from 1985 and 39,013 terminus positions were obtained from the TermPicks dataset. There are 153,281 terminus positions also derived from the AutoTerm dataset, which includes Landsat imagery results.

Other important results used for the total estimate in ice loss incorporated the BedMachine Greenland Version 5 for measuring ice thickness and using MEaSUREs ITS_LIVE velocity mosaics to determine ice velocity. This helps to estimate ice terminus advances.[5] Overall mass and change in ice can be calculated by differences between February 1985 and February 2022 using a 12-month moving mean calculated. Root sum square of uncertainties between 1985-2022 measurements are used to calculate error.
Greenland’s ice loss affects ocean circulation

This amount does not add much to global sea levels; however, it does affect ocean circulation and heat energy transferred by ocean circulation. In general, Greenland is now losing 193 ± 25 km2 ice per year, where glaciers expand to a maximum extent by May and recede to a minimal extent by September/October. However, the overall retreat indicates that ice in Greenland is highly sensitive to overall global climate. Using 95 Greenlandic glaciers, seasonality can be shown to be the most clear indicator of yearly change in ice loss, but overall loss is affected by increasing global temperatures.

Overall, this technique has shown that oceanic circulation would be affected, where the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) would be the most impacted. This would most directly affect precipitation and storms in Europe and the North Atlantic.

The implication of the results suggest not only have we underestimated the effects of ice melt on global ocean circulation, which has consequences on overall climate as circulation models may now need updating to account for the extra water derived from Greenland, but as the pace of melt increases, overall sea level change will need to be reconsidered. If we are now losing more ice than previously thought from Greenland, and possibly other regions, sea level change may affect cities and populations faster than previously thought. More accurate ice loss projections may require a reevaluation of major glaciers and ice sheets in Antarctica as well, given its even larger role in changing sea levels.

Using satellite imagery, flow models, and AI-derived observations, it is clear that ice has been in retreat and thinning in places like Greenland for decades and has been substantially underestimated in previous studies. Now, using this knowledge, we will need to update our understanding of how this excess water will affect our climate and future, with more accelerated ice loss likely to occur.

https://www.geographyrealm.com/greenland-ice-loss/


Ubiquitous acceleration in Greenland Ice Sheet calving from 1985 to 2022

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06863-2


Nearly every glacier in Greenland has thinned or retreated over the past few decades leading to glacier acceleration, increased rates of sea-level rise and climate impacts around the globe. To understand how calving-front retreat has affected the ice-mass balance of Greenland, we combine 236,328 manually derived and AI-derived observations of glacier terminus positions collected from 1985 to 2022 and generate a 120-m-resolution mask defining the ice-sheet extent every month for nearly four decades. Here we show that, since 1985, the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) has lost 5,091 ± 72 km2 of area, corresponding to 1,034 ± 120 Gt of ice lost to retreat. Our results indicate that, by neglecting calving-front retreat, current consensus estimates of ice-sheet mass balance4,9 have underestimated recent mass loss from Greenland by as much as 20%. The mass loss we report has had minimal direct impact on global sea level but is sufficient to affect ocean circulation and the distribution of heat energy around the globe. On seasonal timescales, Greenland loses 193 ± 25 km2 (63 ± 6 Gt) of ice to retreat each year from a maximum extent in May to a minimum between September and October. We find that multidecadal retreat is highly correlated with the magnitude of seasonal advance and retreat of each glacier, meaning that terminus-position variability on seasonal timescales can serve as an indicator of glacier sensitivity to longer-term climate change.