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| Fig. 1 Late March |
The desperate deniers are doing the same thing with a recent glacial event in Greenland that they are doing with the four page Barr report on the multiple-hundreds page Mueller report.
They are exaggerating at best, blatantly lying at worst.
The ice face and grounding line of the Jakobshavn glacier has been retreating for a long time, that is, since the ice shelf holding the glacier back, broke away in the early 2000's (a ~15 year retreat).
In 2016 it began to thicken and move forward again ... in other words more ice was detected in it from its terminus to areas back toward the ice sheet.
This could be a phenomenon of more of the ice sheet flowing out, or could be because the tidal waters in contact with the glacier have cooled.
Either way, as in financial net worth, the bottom line is the one to ponder:
"Preliminary data reported from the reference glaciers of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) in 2018 from Argentina, Austria, China, France, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and United States indicate that 2018 will be the 30th consecutive year of significant negative annual balance (> -200mm); with a mean balance of -1247 mm for the 25 reporting reference glaciers, with only one glacier reporting a positive mass balance ..."(Alpine glaciers: Another decade of loss, emphasis added). An increase in overall mass loss for thirty years in a row is a trend by any standard.
The bottom line with the "Jakobshavn is stretching" paper is:
“But, as mentioned, the glacier [Jakobshavn] is still contributing to ocean level rise worldwide, as it’s still losing more ice to the ocean than it is gaining from snow accumulation, the researchers said.”(Live Science, emphasis added). Ice sheet mass balance is the subject those who can’t fathom this issue need to study:
"The mass balance of a glacier or ice sheet is the net balance between the(ISMASS). Lot’s of comments with little if any value by those who also can’t balance their own check book is telling.mass gained by snow deposition, and the loss of mass by melting (either at the glacier surface or under the floating ice shelves or ice tongues) and calving (production of icebergs). A negative mass balance means that a glacier is losing mass, and, for grounded glaciers and ice sheets, this mass loss directly contributes to sea level rise (the melting of floating ice shelves and ice tongues does not contribute to sea level rise, because of the lower density of ice as compared to water, which determines the floating portion of the ice). This is one of the reasons why it is important, under a warming climate, to have accurate estimates of the mass balance of glaciers and ice sheets."
Fig. 2 Early March
II. Ice Two
I recently wondered if the Arctic-watching satellite was having measurement problems.
I wrote about my concern about that and the sea ice pattern in the Arctic status report in early March (Mysterious Zones of The Arctic - 4).
As it turns out, comparing Fig. 1 with Fig. 2 shows that the Arctic sea ice is going through a similar trend and process as all glaciers and sea ice do.
That is, they are in a long term trend of losing mass, which is to say losing ice quantity by melting or, in the case of glaciers melting and calving.
III. Ice Three
The big picture in this ice-mass-loss trend is and will continue to be what is happening in Antarctica.
Eventually, Antarctica will become the location of the most ice-mass loss and source of sea level change, overtaking the current record holder, Greenland (Mysterious Zones of Antarctica, 2, 3, 4).
IV. Ice Conclusion
The propaganda engines of Oil-Qaeda will continue, as they have for decades, to distort the cognition of feeble minds (Humble Oil-Qaeda).
Don't purchase land with high tide lines on it, i.e., on the coast, if you want to avoid these problematic trends (Pentagon releases list of military bases most at risk [in the U.S.A.] to climate change).
The previous post in this series is here.
Lyrics to Bonny Portmore here.