Temperatures over the WSW Greenland coast have warmed into the low 60s to 70F today. Melt ponds have formed along the emerging dark ice layer where snow is melted off.
The snow melting line coinciding with this area. It's the large patch of bare land over WSW Greenland has doubled it's size moving up the glacier.
It is now almost on top of the 2000M line in this area.
This lead's to one of the most spectacular event's I think in the arctic that I love to track. 90% of the Land ice loss from Summer surface melting comes from less than 15% of the entire glacial surface. Essentially melt percentage above 1500M tell us very little about this Summer's melt's and is more of a tool for tracking super long term changes of the glaciers surface composition and warming.
This is why 2010, 2011, and 2012 while all having different levels of "Greenland torch". 2011 on the whole would have appeared to be a much weaker melt but was slightly below 2010 in Summer ice mass loss and a bit more behind 2012. But 2012 torched hardcore obviously. But the torching differences in the lower 1500M make the difference.
The combination of warm water pouring out of the glacier from melting. With localized heating feedbacks warming coastal waters even more. As well a ice albedo feedback/snow melt albedo feedback and obviously most important of all. The snow cover melting leaving the darker exposed bare land to kick it all off. Incredible localized heating takes place here. This spreads up the entire Western side of the Glacier given cooperative weather(Sun-light) models do a terrible job of capturing this beyond day two.
