According to a new report, the Greenland Ice Sheet lost one trillion tons of water due to melt during the four-year period from 2011 through 2014. That’s about double the typical rate of loss during the 1990s through mid-2000s. Subsequently, Greenland’s contribution to sea-level rise also doubled. As a result, Greenland alone contributed 0.75 mm of sea-level rise every year during the 2011 to 2014 period.
(The above video briefly explains the findings of a new scientific study indicating a doubling in the rate of Greenland melt during 2011 through 2014.)
Bear in mind, the study focuses on Greenland only. Those numbers don’t include thermal expansion from the world’s warming oceans. Nor do they include an increasing amount of melt from Antarctica. Nor do they include large volumes of melt coming from the world’s rapidly disappearing mountain glaciers. Together, all of these in total are pushing sea levels higher by around 4 mm per year during the 2011 through 2016 period. That’s about 1 mm more per year than the 1993 to 2009 period. But the greater additional contribution appears to be coming from melting glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.
The new Greenland Study found that melt averaged around 250 billion tons per year over the four-year period. This included a single melt year, 2012, in which Greenland contributed about half a trillion tons of melt water. The massive 2012 melt was spurred by high Greenland surface temperatures during summer which resulted in spiking surface melt rates during June, July, and August. At the time, a powerful high pressure system focused heat across the ice sheet which caused most of the surface area of Greenland’s glaciers to experience melt.
During 2011–2014, Greenland mass loss averaged 269 ± 51 Gt/yr. Atmospherically driven losses were widespread, with surface melt variability driving large fluctuations in the annual mass deficit. Terminus regions of five dynamically thinning glaciers, which constitute less than 1% of Greenland’s area, contributed more than 12% of the net ice loss. This high-resolution record demonstrates that mass deficits extending over small spatial and temporal scales have made a relatively large contribution to recent ice sheet imbalance.
In other words, melt at the margins of the ice sheet and large surface melt pulses during brief periods were the primary contributors to increasing melt rated during the study period.
(Annual mass losses from Greenland and Antarctica are accelerating. This results in increasing rates of global sea level rise. While mass loss in Antarctica has recently primarily been driven by basal melt, surface melt has been the chief contributor to Greenland mass loss. In addition, the highly variable nature of surface mass loss along with its tendency to create brief, intense melt pulses is some cause for concern. Image source: Charting Ice Sheet Contributions to Global Sea Level Rise.)
The study found that surface melt rates were highly variable and dependent upon weather — with a strongly negative North Atlantic Oscillation contributing to conditions that enhanced melt during 2012. In this case, it appears that natural variability is beginning to be pushed by human-forced warming into a phase where certain years will preferentially further enhance Greenland melt. To this point, the tendency for large surface melt spikes was found to have increased during recent years. In contrast to Antarctica, where warming oceans contact glacial cliff faces and ice shelf undersides to accelerate melt, in Greenland, surface melt appears to currently be playing a bigger role in driving melt acceleration.
Surface melt can produce odd and unstable patterns of melt ponding and runoff over large ice sheets like Greenland. And as Greenland continues to warm due to human-forced climate change, an increasing risk of glacial outburst floods can be the result. The highly variable nature of surface melt is also a concern. In other words, overall warming can produce extreme, if brief, periods of warmth over Greenland that produce disproportionately large melt spikes. In this case, 2012 should not be seen as an outlier, but as the first of many future strong surface melt years — ones that will almost certainly surpass that year in melt intensity unless human-forced warming is somehow brought to a halt.
Links/Attribution/Statements
A High Resolution Record of Greenland Mass Balance
Excellent Comment on the Paper By Slate writer Phil Plait
Charting Ice Sheet Contributions to Global Sea Level Rise
Hat tip to Colorado Bob
Hollie Radloff
/ July 18, 2016I stumbled upon this earlier today:
High Methane Levels Follow Earthquake in Arctic Ocean – July 17, 2016
In the 12 months up to July 14, 2016, 48 earthquakes with a magnitude of 4 or higher on the Richter scale hit the map area of the image below, mostly at a depth of 10 km (6.214 miles).
As temperatures keep rising and as melting of glaciers keeps taking away weight from the surface of Greenland, isostatic rebound can increasingly trigger earthquakes around Greenland, and in particular on the faultline that crosses the Arctic Ocean.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/07/high-methane-levels-follow-earthquake-in-arctic-ocean.html
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Colorado Bob
/ July 18, 2016Hollie –
Good catch, keep your eye on Iceland, the isostatic rebound there is going to be a real problem.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016– Very interesting indeed.
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Isostatic rebound stress on geological systems and loss of ice sheet pressure on volcanoes does appear to be an added risk. We’ve covered it somewhat here. The mainstream science is still a bit leery on the subject.
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Hollie Radloff
/ July 19, 2016“The mainstream science is still a bit leery on the subject.”
I guess that’s a good thing? I’m not sure I would want more frequent/greater opportunities for adequate study(ies). 😉
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Hollie Radloff
/ July 19, 2016Oh, I forget to turn on notifications! Thank you for your comments.
Not entirely unrelated — talk about the follies of the anthropocene: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/beijing-sinking-by-4-inches-11-cm-per-year-due-excessive-pumping-groundwater-survey-1567544
I’ve heard similar reports of sinking from California and Mexico over the past few years. No doubt there are others I can’t recall.
I lived on the Loma Prieta segment of the San Andreas Fault several years ago. My first earthquake (and the only one I experienced while living there) was a small one, but there was plenty of evidence of other times that weren’t so lucky. Over the years, cars and shacks and things had fallen into the ravine behind where our homes stood. Hiking those hills was an eerie reminder of our impermanence on a dynamic planet. Big Creek Lumber wanted to log the redwoods in our watershed. Can you imagine the implications? The residents successfully shut it down. Rebecca Moore of Google Earth fame was on the project. She’s doing interesting work now discovering methane leaks.
http://time.com/4295351/rebecca-moore-google-earth-outreach/
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Leland Palmer
/ July 21, 2016The evidence for methane release after those small earthquakes looked pretty weak to me. The poor quality of the satellite methane data is a constant source of irritation – that data has so much noise in it, the Arctic News conclusion is suspect, in my opinion.
The earth.nullschool images of Siberia data looks really good, though, and are likely quite close to the true values. The data comes from GEOS-5, a NASA computer model that integrates satellite data and then synthesizes it into a coherent whole.
Siberia has had hundreds of wildfires big enough to show up as carbon monoxide hot spots on earth.nullschool this year. Somebody who knows how and has the screen capture software should make a video of this and put it on YouTube, I think. The earth.nullschool carbon monoxide images are a really good way to spot big wildfires and the data looks to be relatively unaffected by cloud cover. The earth.nullschool url can be manually edited to easily go back in time, by the way, without repeatedly hitting the back button.
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climatehawk1
/ July 18, 2016Scheduling tweet.
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umbrios27
/ July 18, 2016Thanks for yet another great article, Robert! Your pace is so fast lately that it´s hard to keep up… and I´m only reading! I can´t imagine how much work it is to research, write and moderate all this, thank you very much for doing it!
If that big melt spike before was in 2012… was it related with the big melt of artic sea ice in 2012? And should we expect a similar big spike this year, which is going so similar to 2012 in terms of loss of northern ice?
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robertscribbler
/ July 18, 2016🙂
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robindatta
/ July 18, 2016Faster than “faster than expected”?
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Syd Bridges
/ July 18, 2016Relating to your last post on the Siberian fires, if the smoke is over Scandinavia, it may well be on its way to Greenland, helping to create more dark snow and aiding more melt. It won’t be long before the GIS alone will be producing as much SLR as we used to see from all sources. Also the other sources are increasing their contributions too. Beachfront property anyone?
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016It’s a bit interesting because the smoke is moving in retrograde to current wind patterns. A bit of a marker for how wavy/confused the Jet Stream has become during recent years.
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redskylite
/ July 18, 2016Robert, I would also like to thank you for all the climate related information and work output at a impressive pace. JMA global temperature anomaly statistics issued shows June 2016 #1 warmest, followed by 2015 and then 2014.
Although we are told not to read to much in monthly statistics, it is indeed very troubling and certainly not totally surprising or unexpected.
Still waiting for NASA GISS June statistics, I speculate they may hold yet another unwanted and grim surprise. NASA has scheduled a conference for today and will release the figures just before.
“Climate experts from NASA will discuss recent trends in global temperatures and Arctic sea ice, as well as research now underway to better understand their impacts, during a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Tuesday, July 19.
NASA scientists track global temperature and sea ice data as part of the agency’s mission to better understand our changing planet. The agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York will release its analysis of June global surface temperatures prior to this teleconference.”
Hope the politicians on all sides take note, but not holding my breath . . .
http://climate.nasa.gov/news/2464/nasa-scientists-to-discuss-2016-climate-trends-impacts/
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Thanks, Redsky. I appreciate the link. Anyone see this conference? GISS is now showing that June of 2016 is the hottest on record at 0.79 C above NASA’s baseline and about 1.01 C above 1880s. Working on the post for this now.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Whales Mourn Their Dead, Just Like Us
Seven species of the marine mammals have been seen clinging to the dead body of a likely friend or relative, a new study says.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/whales-death-grief-animals-science/?google_editors_picks=true
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016– A mother orca carries her dead newborn. Several species of whales show signs of mourning.
Photograph by Robin W. Baird, Cascadia Research
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016So sad…
It doesn’t surprise me in the least. Whales and Dolphins may well have richer mental and emotional lives than humans. They may well also be better problem solvers if some of the recent research is correct.
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Mulga Mumblebrain
/ July 20, 2016Cetaceans have large brain, complex like ours. They have had them for millions of years longer than we have had ours. Yet the hominid chauvinists expect us to believe that they have used them for nothing much more than catching fish. And they live in an environment, the oceans, which we have no ability to comprehend as they do. And we are wiping them out, not vice versa. So who is the superior species, really?
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Public Release: 18-Jul-2016
Flood damages in Germany could multiply under climate change
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Flood-related losses can be expected to increase considerably in Germany as a result of climate change, a new study shows. Extreme events like the severe floods along the river Elbe have already illustrated the potentially devastating consequences of certain weather conditions such as severe rainfall events, when continuing intense rain can no longer be absorbed by the soil and water levels in the rivers rise. Without appropriate adaptation, flood-related damage of currently about 500 million euros a year could multiply in the future, the comprehensive expert analysis published in the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences highlights.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-07/pifc-fdi071516.php
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ July 19, 2016“Public Release: 18-Jul-2016
Flood damages in Germany could multiply under climate change”
Scheduling tweet on this, thanks.
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Europe’s in a rough spot between a lot of conflicting weather patterns. Hot, dry air moving up from the south, North Atlantic changes pulling more storms into Central and Northern Europe, and Arctic changes enforcing more persistent/long lasting patterns. Good report by Potsdam here.
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marcel_g
/ July 19, 2016Wow.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016High tempratures in Japan
Many regions of Japan experienced sweltering weather on Monday.
Temperatures topped 30 degrees Celsius at 438 locations across the country.
The city of Koshu in Yamanashi Prefecture recorded a high of 37.5 degrees and the city of Shimanto in Kochi Prefecture had 35.8 degrees.
Weather officials are warning people to be careful of heatstroke, as the hot weather is expected to continue across the country.
More than 500 people were taken to hospitals nationwide with apparent heatstroke symptoms. One of them died and another is in critical condition.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20160719_03/
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016This is becoming an annual event for Japan, DT.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016– USA SW – Dams/infrastructure – History 1983 for anyone interested in the chronicle of Lake Powell’s Glen Canyon Dam when the pressure from upstream flooding stressed a concrete spillway to the point where it disintegrated and jeopardized the dam itself.
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Scott
/ July 20, 2016And a few years before that, “People downstream had better get out – People downstream had better get out!” Kind of an understatement. June 5, 1976 the Teton dam collapsed in eastern Idaho.
“The wall of water is 5-6 miles wide.”
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wili
/ July 19, 2016The fastest rate that Hansen considered for doubling of sea level rise was five years. Doesn’t this kinda suggests that it could be even (slightly) shorter than that, if the same kinds of dynamics that accelerated GIS melt also might apply to Antarctica?
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016It’s kinda revolving around the big melt pulse year of 2012. If we’re going to have a five year doubling rate, we’ll need 1.5 to 2 2012s sometime between now and 2020. 2016 looks like a no-go for that. But the thing to read here is that there’s a tendency for these big melt pulse years to set up. And that’s problematic from a geophysical perspective. It means that there’s probably not this stable ramp. It means that melt tends to happen in big events. And that’s a bit risky and troublesome.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016LikeLike
robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Just worth noting that this isn’t sea ice here. These are glaciers that tower hundreds of feet high.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016LikeLike
Jay M
/ July 19, 2016Euro clouds lift above Iberian peninsula 0716
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Andy_in_SD
/ July 19, 2016If you look at this location just south of Jakobshavn and then flip to previous years (no need to change the month/day) it becomes quite apparent.The surface ice melt carnage is very telling, and at much higher elevations / further inland.
Take note of the light blue melt patterns, as well as the size / location of melt ponds (lakes?).
In the previous years, you will see the melt patterns are not present in their current locations, and are much smaller.
http://www.arctic.io/explorer/8/2016-07-17/9-N67.57712-W48.78115
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Andy_in_SD
/ July 19, 2016Here is the same month / day from last year. Again, you can flip further back to previous years using the top / middle date picker.
http://www.arctic.io/explorer/8/2015-07-17/9-N67.57712-W48.78115
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Cate
/ July 19, 2016Andy, coasting northward from your permalink, toggling from 17 to 18 July, it looks like the whole west coast of Greenland is in full-on melt mode now. There’s a big spew of greyish stuff coming out the mouth of Jakobshavn fjord, for one. Lots of ice motion, break-up, and outflow further up, right through Nares Strait. Yesterday I spotted a big transverse crack in the Petermann channel and another big chunk breaking loose in an Ellesmere fjord. It’s ice-moving season in the north.
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Cate
/ July 19, 2016Argh, sorry–misread the Jakobshavn outflow! but Nares is worth checking out. 🙂
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Andy’s been doing some good work using satellite imagery to observe/compare various Greenland glacial states. Jakobshavn, Petermann, and Zachariae are among the ones to watch closely.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016LikeLike
robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Well done.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016– Robert, glad to see your:
“…Those numbers don’t include thermal expansion from the world’s warming oceans. Nor do they include an increasing amount of melt from Antarctica. Nor do they include large volumes of melt coming from the world’s rapidly disappearing mountain glaciers.”
– Must never lose sight of the aggregate.
🙂
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016🙂
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ July 19, 2016– Robert, if we expect precipitation at he edges/fringes of this heat dome — beyond that, should we also expect ice melting/softening warm and moist air in the Arctic?
Thx
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Spike
/ July 19, 2016Similar heat in UK
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016That’s nuts, Spike. You guys have AC over there in the UK?
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Spike
/ July 20, 2016No Robert we’ve never needed it before. Last night was very uncomfortable – I went for a walk in the woods at 8pm and it was still 30C here in the centre of England. Pretty unusual for this neck of the woods.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016LikeLike
Greg
/ July 19, 2016Wow. A mushroom cloud from the sky.
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Yeah, or a waterfall running out of heaven.
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Spike
/ July 20, 2016So we had atmospheric rivers, now atmospheric waterfalls! 😉
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016– USA So Cal – LA River/Long Beach:
Long Beach’s acting health officer, Dr. Mauro Torno, ordered the closure of all of the city’s coastal beaches after a massive sewage spill originating in downtown Los Angeles resulted in sewage flowing down the course of the Los Angeles River.
Long Beach officials announced the beach closures shortly after 5 p.m. Monday. The beaches are to remain off limits until Health Department officials can conduct laboratory tests that show local ocean waters are safe for people.
An estimated 108,000 gallons of sewage have poured from a broken pipe by the time Long Beach officials declared the beach closures. A repair had not been completed as of shortly after 5 p.m., according to the Long Beach announcement.
http://www.presstelegram.com/environment-and-nature/20160718/la-sewage-spill-closes-beaches-in-long-beach
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Mashable picked up the Russian fire story –
Huge swaths of Russia’s forests are ablaze during what may be a record fire season
http://mashable.com/2016/07/18/siberia-forest-fires-smoke-satellite/#TzxvQ3dg0SqG
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Today’s morning pass over Russia , notice the dirty browns in the smoke, the ground is really burning –
Terra/MODIS
2016/201
07/19/2016
05:55 UTC
Link
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Farther West –
Terra/MODIS
2016/201
07/19/2016
07:35 UTC
Link
And we’ve still got 90 days of fire season left.
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Good to see Mashable on this.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016The tundra burning in the big Russian gas producing region –
Aqua/MODIS
2016/201
07/19/2016
07:50 UTC
Link
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016The area covered by smoke is just nuts, thousands and thousands of square miles –
Aqua/MODIS
2016/201
07/19/2016
07:45 UTC
Link
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016LikeLike
Greg
/ July 19, 2016Way to stay on top of this CB. Even hard to find anything coming out of Russia in the Press. This, from the Siberian Times, is dated:
http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0682-beware-smoke-forest-fires-pose-terrifying-traffic-hazard-in-siberia/
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Greg
/ July 19, 2016But how about that weird weather? Floods, Snow, tornadoes
http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0674-more-weird-weather-hits-siberia-tornadoes-floods-now-snow/
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Thanks for these updates, Bob. Great work here. The fires are just producing an insane amount of smoke.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016A Dreaded Forecast for Our Times: Algae, and Lots of It
In 2014, Congress reauthorized the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act, originally passed in 1998, to encourage more research. But the measure didn’t actually provide funding; it only signaled the need for it.
So money for algal bloom science comes from more general federal science funds, and those pots are shrinking. Congressionally approved funding for a broad range of related science is around $9 million this year, down 45 percent from five years ago, according to several scientists involved in the research. That means less money for deploying sensors or even to pay for boats and crews to monitor the shorelines.
“It’s a paradox,” said Christopher Gobler, a professor of marine sciences at Stony Brook University who provides the data for Mr. Korbel’s weekly report and believes the field should be more mainstream. “We need it more than ever, and we’ve brought ourselves to the precipice of making great forecasts, but we can’t make it happen.”
LinkVera Trainer, a NOAA scientist in Seattle who studies algal blooms, had to ask for volunteers to go on a research expedition to study algal concentrations in the Pacific Ocean because she did not have the money to send her own staff.
“I feel like a beggar,” she said.
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016So, yeah. Vote for a republican and see what you end up with. Tax cuts for the rich. Privatization of everything public. And funding cuts to critical science.
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Greg
/ July 19, 2016Joe Romm has a solid update on solar and new energy costs. “BNEF projects that by 2040, the world will invest an astonishing $3.4 trillion in solar. That’s more than the projected cumulative investment of $2.1 trillion for all fossil fuels — and $1.1 trillion in new nuclear — combined.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/07/18/3797907/solar-energy-miracle-charts/
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016I read his article here last night. Very comprehensive. Excellent work on the subject. He’s really turned into an amazing expert on alternative energy. More people should read his stuff.
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Marcel Guldemond (@marcel_g)
/ July 19, 2016I really appreciate that he’s still going, despite the fact that going by what he wrote years ago it could very well already be too late. It must be depressing to be sounding an urgent alarm like that and seemingly have no one listen. He’s one of the first alarm-sounders that I started reading regularly.
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016He was a huge inspiration for the work I do here. He seems to have backed off from the catastrophic climate change research a bit. I can understand. It’s tough psychologically. But he’s still fighting hard for doing the right thing. I can really admire him for all that he’s done.
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Erik
/ July 19, 2016Hi, my first comment here, thanks to Robert for his efforts.
Although Greenland’s melting is obviously concerning, its topography was described by the glaciologist Richard Alley as a waffle iron, preventing a fast slide into the ocean.
Not so in West Antarctica, the topography of which was described by Alley as “a greased griddle”.
Our current forcing is so much stronger than past natural forcings that we have no record to tell us how fast the ice sheets may melt.
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Surface melt, however…
It’s also worth noting that Greenland isn’t invulnerable to basal intrusion —
It’s just that Antarctica is scary vulnerable to melt from below. (As Bob and you note — it’s a greased griddle and those long inland below sea level slopes don’t help matters).
Add in a little sea level rise and the Greenland topography looks less sanguine in any case. And that bowl area in the Greenland center makes a catchment for surface melt that could form an overtopping sub glacial lake at some point or another.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Erik
This may help, Greenland is a chain of islands .
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Erik
/ July 19, 2016Thanks to both of you for the interesting images.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Greg –
Thanks, I never get tried of looking at the MODIS images .
They have added the one from this morning to the gallery feature. I took another look at it closely, at the 250 meter resolution , every red dot in the upper half of image is burning tundra.
This is really a very scary image for what reveals , ………… the future.
It makes “The Anaktuvuk River fire, the biggest in North Slope history, burns across the tundra Sept. 10, 2007.” look like a marsh mellow roast
And the fact that so many fires are burning over so many rich methane deposits,
There’s a place in Iran, were a methane seep has been on fire for 2,500 years, it is thought the “burning bush” idea first came from this feature.
Aqua/MODIS
2016/201
07/19/2016
07:50 UTC
Fires and smoke in central Russia
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016The Anaktuvuk River fire was started by lighting , Which ties into Neven’s post from the other day.
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Greg
/ July 19, 2016CB, thank you. If we could overlay a well known geographic outline on one of those MODIS images the size would really pop out, such as an outline of England, France, Texas, etc. I don’t have the software currently but if anyone else does, please do. It will show just how huge these areas are for most readers. I see it intellectually but not viscerally. (The possible burning bush origin is fascinating.)
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Greg
/ July 19, 2016I added population density which shows almost no one lives there which partly explains the attention its getting:
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=geographic&l=MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),VIIRS_SNPP_Fires_375m_Day(hidden),MODIS_Fires_Terra(hidden),MODIS_Fires_Aqua,grump-v1-population-count_2000,Reference_Labels(hidden),Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines(hidden)&t=2016-07-19&v=55.999,55.406,106.0064,71.5938
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016I added population density which shows almost no one lives there which partly explains the attention its getting:
Exactly.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016One of the great disasters of our time is unfolding as I type. The other day Neven put up a great post about lighting moving North. Iced lightning.
It seems the sea ice used to tamp down the storms in the summer, and their ability in the Arctic to produce lighting over land.
That has changed .
I first saw this 9 years ago when The Anaktuvuk River fire
was started by lighting . It was the largest tundra fire in the last 5,000 years in that region.
But today the fires in Russia , make the Anaktuvuk River fire look like a marsh mellow roast . And they are burning over the richest gas deposits the Russians have. Think I’m crazy ? Go down to the 250 meter resolution , and look at this, this is a big deal.
Aqua/MODIS
2016/201
07/19/2016
07:50 UTC
Fires and smoke in central Russia
Link
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016It’s lighting off pretty badly. God that looks like an absolute mess.
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Leland Palmer
/ July 21, 2016Wow, amazing. A huge increase in the number of fires in just a few days.
http://go.nasa.gov/2a169JH
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Leland Palmer
/ July 21, 2016Ugly, ugly, ugly. https://earth.nullschool.net/#2016/07/21/0000Z/chem/surface/level/overlay=cosc/orthographic=-284.00,53.20,1024/loc=49.806,53.832
Oh, we can’t pay attention. We have to watch the Duck Dynasty guy at the Republican National Convention tell us “Donald Trump has your back”.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016RS –
I have 2 comments in the spam can.
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Going to get them now!
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Exposing the Big Game
/ July 19, 2016Reblogged this on Exposing the Big Game.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016LikeLike
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ July 19, 2016“Waters in Tampa Bay reached 95 degrees last week per @noaaocean gauge. 95. Degrees.”
Retweeting, thanks.
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robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016This is kind of a WTF moment for me.
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Spike
/ July 20, 2016Approaching body temperature!!
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016– USA – Cities react to AGW
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016– Watch how many of the hottest are in fossil fuel or GOP Texas and Florida.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016LikeLike
robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Another black irony really. These states are basically voting to ensure that climate crises, when they do come, hit them the hardest. Red states are getting pretty red hot due to all that climate change they’re ignoring. Not something I like to see. Can we please just mitigate this?
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Greg –
Alley was right , Antarctica is a greased griddle, and all it’s pancakes are melting from the bottom.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016– Alaska – Wildfire
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Waters in Tampa Bay reached 95 degrees last week.
These numbers blanket Florida waters. One wonders how life in this can live in this heat?
This is like watching fires in Russia.
Fires in the sea, and fires in the Arctic.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016Right. All is heat — usually from one human caused fossil fuel carbon source.
All is heat…
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016LikeLike
dtlange
/ July 19, 2016– I don’t recall the above Great White Con (An odd name.) being linked to here. They have quite a bit info there.
About The Great White Con
On Sunday September 8th 2013 the Mail on Sunday (and the Mail Online) published an article about Arctic sea ice which we feel was “economical with the truth“. According to the Mail:
A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year – an increase of 60 per cent.
On the same day The Telegraph Online published a similar article.
We think that’s all part of the “Great White Con”.
Here we set out to put the record straight.
http://greatwhitecon.info/2016/07/the-mid-july-surf-forecast-for-the-beaufort-sea/
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016LikeLike
Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Fires in the sea, and fires in the Arctic.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016This is climate change.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016– What about a lightning strike(s) igniting Siberian/Arctic methane blow holes/seeps?
The imagination can do wild things with this… Yikes!
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Cate
/ July 19, 2016Almost unimaginable, dt. Yet seriously possible.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016I planned to be dead long before all this. To see at it all now, makes my liver quiver.
Here’s a list of my warnings :
“Buckle your chin strap”
“Get really little little lady. Hell is coming to breakfast”
Solid advice, from an old lunatic.
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Greg
/ July 19, 2016And to paraphrase:
And watch out for the little critters. They will eat us for lunch
And heat chases cold. Goodbye cold.
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dtlange
/ July 19, 2016LikeLike
robertscribbler
/ July 19, 2016Thank you, Dept of the Interior.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Enya – Sail Away(Orinoco Flow)
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016We can’t grind this rancid news everyday, without a breath. This is way I post these songs. . Music shows us we are better than our thoughts/
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016I am heart broken . At the end of my bag of answers.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Next up ……. “Hell comes to Breakfast”.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Grateful Dead – Hell In A Bucket –
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Terrapin Station – The Complete Song – Studio
No one ever wrote a better allbum ever..
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Here we are tween happy and sad, Between crazy and mad
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Too profound ? Let’s go back ip 1984.
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Cate
/ July 20, 2016When summer was summer, we girls all wished we could be California girls.
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Cate
/ July 19, 2016Indian novelist and non-fiction writer has a new book out: “The Great Derangement—Climate Change and the Unthinkable.”
Interesting interview with him here.
http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/zo1459rOwDTjYN9Wr1ZJqJ/Amitav-Ghosh-We-are-living-our-lives-as-though-we-are-mad.html
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Cate
/ July 19, 2016Oh yeah, his name is Amitav Ghosh. Too hot to think here at the moment.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016Been watching that dumpster fire in by the lake.
What America needs, is more willfull ignorance, and dogma, After that it’s all “Oakley Dokley” .
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Kevin Jones
/ July 19, 2016Thanks, Cate. Nice to know we’re not alone.
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Abel Adamski
/ July 20, 2016Thanks Cate
An excellent article, a very worthwhile read
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Colorado Bob
/ July 19, 2016Zappa never died
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seal
/ July 19, 2016To all that read and post links to new info here; thank you. Thanks RS for putting this site up even though all the freaking news everyone posts is about the on-going collapse of our climate. Nothing good, eh folks?
Been reading, watching, and living with the radical changes in the world’s climate and oceans for over half of my life (almost 62 now) as a 50+ year surfer/40+ year snowboarder who has moved from living on different beaches to living in different mountain ranges for the second half of my life. What I realized is that the visible changes have been in my face because of where I have lived where people in cities…they just don’t notice. Bird and insect populations going down, forests dying around me of drought, seasons just completely mixed up. Oh my.
Like CB, I too never expected to see any of what I’ve been reading and seeing around me actually happen while I was still alive. Not at this level of…intensity.
Twenty years ago, thirty years, the authors of so many science articles seemed to be of a like mind in their warnings of ‘Look out next century’ when it would go off the rails. Seems like they all were a wee bit too optimistic, doesn’t it? Anybody else notice that in the last ten or so the question of ‘when’ has shifted from 2100 to 2070, to 2050, and now…well, the optimists seem to be getting a bit nervous.
In 2004 I read an article on CommonDreams that was published by the Observer/UK Feb. 22, 2004 that was titled: ‘Now the Pentagon Tells Bush: Climate Change Will Destroy US’ about a report that was buried by the Bush Administration. Now I’m not exactly a friend of the Pentagon but their best minds at the time were giving us a 20 year time limit before “Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.” 2024. Were getting close to that date and there sure seems to be a lot of refugees flooding Europe and it isn’t all from war. Even the wars going on started with droughts and loss of food crops (Syria in particular did). Now there are more refugees worldwide than at the end of WWII. I read recently that estimates are in the 62 million range.
You folks are paying attention. Notice what the world is doing out your window? Yep, me, too.
At nearly the same time in 2004 a study came out of a UC Santa Cruz climatologist’s lab whose team came out with the connection between melting Arctic Ice and the creation of persistent high pressure domes off the West Coast that would cause the Jet Stream to re-direct north. Yeah, well…the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge been around for years now. El Nino shoved it away but it’s baaaaack.
I moved north that year from Mt. Shasta after having moved back to Cali ten years earlier from the Bear River Range of N. Utah (after a stint as a student at Utah State) and kept warning friends and family that what’s happening now to California was coming. I was poo-poo’d a lot and told to quit being such a pessimist. The ski resort there opened this last winter for the first time in three years…
Here in the Selkirk Range of NE Washington State north of Spokane the climate has literally gone off the rails. Impressively according to a retired biologist/teacher neighbor who has been keeping a calendar for nearly 50 years here. I’ve only been here 12 winters now and it has completely changed even in that short time on the calendars I keep. Giant vicious windstorms/lightning blasting monster t-storms, drought, fires, very little snowpack up above to the 4,000 foot and higher. And it has nearly quit snowing at my elevation (2,000+ ft.). What snow does fall doesn’t stay because temps in the 40 & 50F range show up at the start of February. This last winter was better. Sort of. With the calendar in front of me I see rain, 55’F days, 20’F sunny, pouring rain on the local ski hill (49’N), and Feb. 27-29 it was in the 60s.
Almost the entire month of March was in the 50s at my elevation. On the 28th we got 15″ of snow on my hill while it rained down here. On the 29th it was 72’F and 74’F on the 30th & 31st. By the first week of April, the last week of the ski season, it was in the 80s. The hill was 75’F on top of the peak…in April! I was snowboarding in a tank top. Unheard of this close to Canada’s border.
We went over 100’F in June. No ‘last June frost’ anymore, either.
I watched giant lightning bolts slam down in Colville last Friday along with 1/2 inch hail and a deluge of rain so large there were waves washing across the streets.
So to all of you, again thanks for being out there, for being intelligent and aware of all this, for talking out loud. There are times when it gets pretty hard being surrounded by incredible ignorant people who absolutely refuse to read the science. Seems like only my neighbor and I are paying attention here.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016seal –
Welcome, don’t write giant blocks of text. (No one reads them). If i did that, the entire page would be full, and it would not load.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016seal –
Insert smiley face here.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016seal –
Enya – Sail Away(Orinoco Flow)
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016seal –
“It’s a wild time, I’m doing things that don’t have a name yet”. A 50 year old quote.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016Please, everyone RS is deep. We are just the parts of this song.
Everyone suck on this –
Maurice Ravel BOLERO – Wiener Philharmonic
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016The best you’ll ever hear.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016Rhapsody In Blue: Gershwin
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016Music, not words move people.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016John Hiatt – Long Time Comin’ [Audio Stream]
Music, not words move people.
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016John Hiatt – Slow Turning
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016John Hiatt Riding – With The King – 1983
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016John Hiatt & Sonny Landreth – Riding With the King
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Colorado Bob
/ July 20, 2016words fail us
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seal
/ July 20, 2016CB, I’m an old musician, ace lead harmonica and a conga hand percussionist. I love some of the old music you keep putting up!
Sorry for being so wordy. I am…noisy. And I’m on dial-up in these mountains…
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