A glaciologist has warned that, after a year of record-breaking temperatures, the Greenland ice sheet is “retreating and thinning extensively” and global warming is “worse than ever”.
Dr Alun Hubbard and his team of 15 students from Aberystwyth University camped on the ice sheet for five months from May and found that rising temperatures had caused extensive melting in this “very sensitive polar region of the planet”. The melt water, which runs into the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, was found to be double the quantity of that seen in 2009.
Dr Hubbard, however, disputes claims that the ice sheet could collapse completely in 50 years but agrees that its future is grim. After the summer-long expedition, he concluded that it would take at least 100 to 1,000 years before the ice sheet “potentially passes any point of no return leading to any widespread collapse”.
The team also found that enhanced melting was “directly contributing to global sea-level rise” and that global warming, at least locally in Greenland, was “worse than ever”. “This year was another record-breaking year marked by very warm temperatures across Greenland and the Arctic,” said Dr Hubbard in a report by the BBC.
“This warming enhanced and extended melting into new northern and upper parts of the ice sheet generating huge quantities – at least double that compared with the previous year – of melt water, which runs off the ice sheet into the ocean,” he added.
I was not expecting the melt to be so bad so soon. However, by 2020 the Arctic should be ice free every summer. When that happens, the Arctic ocean to the northwest of Greenland will be above freezing. Therefore all the air coming to it from that direction, which is most of it, will be melting Greenland big time. I think Greenland will then go into a hyper-melt mode. This hyper-melt mode will melt Greenland much faster, I think, than has been calculated.
BTW, anyone notice, Hudson Bay is still not frozen over!
Science is no match for the U.S. Congress or Lord Obama! There is NO law of physics that cannot be overturned by decree!
Congress, and K-Street lobbyists with huge campaign contributions, can defeat the melting ice sheets and fix the Arctic weather! They will rape the American Taxpayer until the Greenland ice problem is solved!
Can NOA (North Atlantic Oscillation) have something to do with this? We are told that the cold weather in Europe is due to this phenomena and on the other side of it (I think Greenland is on the other side) there it is warmer than it normally should be.
Search google on “US Navy PIPS” and you will find this: “31 Dec 2010 – US Navy Polar Ice Prediction System data shows that the area of ice greater than 2.5 metres thick – has doubled since the same date in 2008.” They are talking about the Arctic.