http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/ as at 11 July 2019This event just will not stop.
Melt remains strong , almost at
maximum again for the year. Again concentrated in the West and the South. I am sure the persistence of this strong melt is unusual, as normally we just see strong short-term spikes.
Precipitation, was low, and as a result mass loss was greatly above average, but a bit less than the previous day or two.
GFS
Precipitation outlook for the next 5 10 days still looking like very dry to drought over most of Greenland.
But in the following 5 days, it looks like a stronger weather system shovels copious quantities of warmth and moisture up Baffin bay, with precipitation - RAIN - all along the West coast.
Melt. Temperatures above freezing around most of the coast in the next week. The SST anomalies in Baffin Bay can only increase as final sea ice melt out is completed.. High pressure has been, is, and will be stuck over Greenland until ....? This is likely to keep most of Greenland dry, and maybe sunny? This should help to maintain melt.
SMB mass change is a matter of which prevails, precipitation or melt. It looks likely the SMB graph will show above average SMB loss over the next few days.
Signs of slightly less above average temperatures over Greenland after a few days. i.e. melt would continue, but at a more average rate. But I've been saying that for days. We will see.
It becomes clear that precipitation, or the lack of it, may determine the overall SMB loss during the melting season at least as much as melt. My speculation remains that in 2012, even though melt was spectacularly high, lack of precipitation was as or more important than melt in the unprecedented SMB loss that year.
At the moment 2019 is giving 2012 a run for its money (as it is for Arctic Sea Ice).
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grixm in the post above notes that NSIDC's "Greenland Today" website shows a higher melt spike. This is usual. They are using a different model but the same definition of what is melt.
The link is http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/But unless there is a good reason to change I will stick with DMI's analysis for the sake of consistency.
Note from DMIWhen comparing melt with the surface mass balance under ”Daily change”, note that melting can occur without surface mass loss since the meltwater can refreeze in the underlying snow. Likewise, surface mass loss can occur without melting due to sublimation.
The map illustrates how the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet gains and loses mass on a daily basis. This is known as the surface mass balance. It does not include the mass that is lost when glaciers calve off icebergs and melt as they come into contact with warm seawater.Note from me to any denier creeps out there:
From 2002 to 2017 Greenland lost over 3 thousand billion tons of mass, an average of nearly 300 billion tons per annum. This is about the same as the average annual mass loss of ice from the entire Arctic Seas.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ice-sheets/This is simply because mass loss from glaciers calving exceeds mass gain on the surface from snowfall.
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