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Author Topic: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely  (Read 14047 times)

HeisenIceBerg

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Jason Box just posted a new blog entry today about snowfall in Greenland during this past winter and the implications it has for the upcoming melt season: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely.

Snowfall over most of the GIS was well below average, especially over parts of western Greenland, where snowfall was only 50% of the average, and a section of the northeastern coast, where snowfall was only 30% or less of the average.

Edit: Taking a second look at the below graph, I'm actually not completely sure how to interpret the numbers.  I'm not sure if the numbers in brown indicate percent below the average or percent of the average.


Albedo over the GIS (land excluded) from mid-march to anout the last week of April was well below any values observed since 2000.


If you haven't visited Jason Box's blog before, you should read some of his other posts.  His posts are usually very up to date with what is happening, and he will often post information and analysis that would otherwise take several months to be published in a paper.  Recently he has only been posting once ever month or two, but that isn't unexpected during the winter; his blog was very active during June-September last year, and will probably be very active during this melt season.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2013, 09:57:24 PM by HeisenIceBerg »
The HeisenIceBerg uncertainty principle of climate science: The less sure climate scientists are about something, the more sure climate deniers are that it means climate change isn't happening or doesn't matter.

The converse is not true.

Neven

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Re: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely
« Reply #1 on: May 03, 2013, 11:40:35 PM »
Thanks for this, HIB. I'll post on this tomorrow.
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CraigsIsland

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Re: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely
« Reply #2 on: May 04, 2013, 01:49:48 AM »
very nice find.

Greenland looks horrible. :o

Pmt111500

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Re: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely
« Reply #3 on: May 04, 2013, 03:59:04 AM »
That should hurt some who were saying greenland ice sheet upper parts are growing, unless they're dismissing albedo data. The high pressures over Greenland have been quite efficient in keeping the clouds away it seems.  If I was a proper doomer I might say the arctic ice death spiral is moving over land and the positive feedbacks are showing here, but this might still be weather (quotes self from sea level rise poll thread: "ask again after three years.").

Dromicosuchus

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Re: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely
« Reply #4 on: May 04, 2013, 04:18:13 AM »
Hm.  Unique behavior, but then it IS a short record.  This summer is going to be extremely interesting in a large number of different ways; both in terms of the sea ice and Greenland, we're going into the season with conditions that haven't occurred before in our records, and for which we don't really know what to expect.

...Well, "lots and lots of melt" is a pretty safe bet, but quantifying that and the way in which it'll happen is where the fun comes in.


TerryM

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Re: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely
« Reply #6 on: May 11, 2013, 05:50:47 AM »
Not surprising seeing as it's been displayed on the global drought monitor: http://drought.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/drought.html?map=%2Fwww%2Fdrought%2Fweb_pages%2Fdrought.map&program=%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmapserv&root=%2Fwww%2Fdrought2%2F&map_web_imagepath=%2Ftmp%2F&map_web_imageurl=%2Ftmp%2F&map_web_template=%2Fdrought.html


Wonderful link - especially the Google Earth interface!  Had no idea how bad things actually are in Greenland & te CAA


Terry

Pmt111500

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Re: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely
« Reply #7 on: June 05, 2013, 09:28:24 AM »
Spring snowfalls that continued for 5 weeks ended the snow drought, keeping the albedo up at least in the lower elevations,  normal melt process should continue in a bit :-/. http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=950

wanderer

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Re: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely
« Reply #8 on: June 10, 2013, 04:07:16 PM »
A research-team of the Austrian institut of Meteorology ZAMG is expecting huge losses this summer due to lack of "wintersnow".

They are particularly researching glacier lake outburst floods and published this video of a glacier lake at the A.P. Olsen Ice Cap.


For those that understand german (pics as well):
http://www.zamg.ac.at/cms/de/klima/news/wenig-winterschnee-auf-den-gletschern-groenlands-grosse-massenverluste-im-sommer-erwartet

Paul Beckwith

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Re: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely
« Reply #9 on: June 29, 2013, 05:53:13 AM »
Very impressive video, thanks for posting.  The melt lake basically drained out catastrophically on August 6, 2012 as seen in the video; must have been from an ice dam failure...

ChrisReynolds

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Re: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely
« Reply #10 on: July 02, 2013, 07:11:08 PM »
Unless a geopotential height ridge forms over Greenland very soon, we will not see a record melt on the Greenland ice sheet,

1. Hanna "The influence of North Atlantic atmospheric and oceanic
forcing effects on 1900–2010 Greenland summer climate and ice melt/runoff"
They find a "strong statistical relation between GBI (Greenland Blocking Index) and GrIS runoff,"

2. SLP for post 2007 years shows (for JJA) strong high pressure over Greenland, surrounded by low pressure, implying high blocking index. This pattern is clear in the June average for 2007 to 2012:


But this year the pattern has not developed:


Past ten years SLP field plots here:
http://dosbat.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/june-status-part-2a-atmosphere-slp.html

sidd

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Re: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely
« Reply #11 on: July 11, 2013, 05:05:49 AM »
Box has updated albedo graf thru June at

http://meltfactor.org/blog

specifically

http://www.meltfactor.org/files/2013/06/0-3200m_Greenland_Ice_Sheet_Reflectivity.png

and brings news of

http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland-ice-shelf/nbsp/total-mass-change/

with daily (!) estimates of melt

Go, Box, go!

Espen

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Re: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely
« Reply #12 on: July 11, 2013, 05:44:48 PM »
Red invasion to Greenland:

http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/
Have a ice day!

Espen

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Re: Greenland “snow drought” makes big 2013 melt more likely
« Reply #13 on: July 26, 2013, 07:33:52 PM »
Have a ice day!

JimD

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