Greenland

Number of papers: 4

Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018 — Nature, 2019; The IMBIE team

“In all, Greenland lost 3,902 ± 342 billion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2018, causing the mean sea level to rise by 10.8 ± 0.9 millimetres. Using three regional climate models, we show that the reduced surface mass balance has driven 1,964 ± 565 billion tonnes (50.3 per cent) of the ice loss owing to increased meltwater runoff. … The total rate of ice loss slowed to 222 ± 30 billion tonnes per year between 2013 and 2017, on average, as atmospheric circulation favoured cooler conditions and ocean temperatures fell at the terminus of Jakobshavn Isbræ. Cumulative ice losses from Greenland as a whole have been close to the rates predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for their high-end climate warming scenario, which forecast an additional 70 to 130 millimetres of global sea-level rise by 2100 compared with their central estimate.” What does this mean? They are using models — and we know all models are wrong — to “show” that Greenland isn’t losing much ice or contributing much to sea-level rise. In the 20th century, sea level rose 25cm (10 inches) all by itself, and now they tell us that Greenland is on track to help sea level increase how much? 70–130mm, which amounts to 3–6 inches. How alarming does that sound?

Greenland Ice Sheet Mass Balance (1992–2020) From Calibrated Radar Altimetry — Geophysical Research Letters, 2021; Simonsen et al.

“Our mass balance record shows a GrIS contribution of 12.1 ± 2.3 mm sea-level equivalent since 1992, with more than 80% of this contribution occurring after 2003.”

Hmm … 1.2cm in 28 years.

The Holocene dynamics of Ryder Glacier and ice tongue in north Greenland — The Cryosphere, 2021; O’Regan et al.

In 2019, a team of scientists investigated the history of the remote Ryder glacier and found that it isn’t melting much at all, and that it really melted a lot from 10,000 to 6,000 years ago, when the tongue retreated about 120 km upslope. It regrew and retreated many times. In the 1930s, it retreated a lot. Then, they say, “Ryder’s ice tongue is 25 km long and has been relatively stable during the last 70 years, showing a net advance of about 43 m yr−1 between 1948 and 2015.” I believe that’s the period when all the CO2 is supposed to have caused all the dramatic melting. However, to get published, the authors had to add the obligatory “highlighting the potential for substantial retreat in response to ongoing climate change” at the end of the abstract. I doubt the paper would have been published without that.

Melt in the Greenland EastGRIP ice core reveals Holocene warm events, Westhoff et al — Climate of the Past, 2022; Westhoff et al.

This is a remarkably readable paper. From the abstract: “Considering the ice dynamics of the EastGRIP site resulting from the flow of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS), we find that summer temperatures must have been at least 3 ± 0.6 ◦C warmer during the Early Holocene compared to today”

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