Record warmth at the top of the Greenland Ice Sheet
The coldest place in Greenland, and often the entire Northern Hemisphere, is commonly the Summit Station. Located at the top of the Greenland Ice Sheet, 10,551 feet (3216 meters) above sea level, and 415 miles (670 km) north of the Arctic Circle, Summit rarely sees temperatures that rise above the freezing mark. In the 12-year span 2000 - 2011, Summit temperatures rose above freezing only four times, according to weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera. But remarkably, over the past week, temperatures at Summit have eclipsed the freezing mark on five days, including four days in a row from July 11 - 14. There are actually three weather stations located at the location--Summit, Summit-US, and Summit AWS. The highest reliable temperature measured at any of the three stations is now the 3.6°C (38.5°F) measured on Monday, July 16, 2012 at Summit-US. A 4.4°C reading at Summit in May, 2010 is bogus, as can be seen by looking at the adjacent station. Similarly, a 3.3°C reading from June 2004 is also bad. Records at Summit began in 1987.
Video 1. A 20-ton tractor attempting to repair a bridge washed out by the raging Watson River on July 11, 2012 in Kangerlussauaq, Greenland gets washed downstream. The driver escaped unharmed. Image taken from an article, Warm air over the ice sheet provides great drama in Greenland, at the Danish Meteorological Institute's web site.
Record heat leads to major flooding in Greenland
The record heat has triggered significant melting of Greenland's Ice Sheet. According to the Arctic Sea Ice Blog, on July 11, glacier melt water from the Russell Glacier flooded the Watson River, smashing two bridges connecting the north and south of Kangerlussuaq (Sønder Strømfjord), a small settlement in southwestern Greenland. The flow rate of 3.5 million liters/sec was almost double the previous record flow rate. The latest forecast for Summit calls for cooler conditions over the coming week, with no more above-freezing temperatures at Summit.
Another huge iceberg calves off of Greenland's Petermann Glacier
A massive ice island two times the size of Manhattan and half as thick as the Empire State Building calved off of Greenland's Petermann Glacier on Monday, July 16, 2012. According to Andreas Muenchow, associate professor of physical ocean science and engineering at the University of Delaware's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment in his Icy Seas blog, the break-off point has been visible for at least 8 years in satellite imagery, and has been propagating at 1 km/year towards Nares Strait. The same glacier calved an iceberg twice as big back on August 4, 2010--the largest iceberg observed in the Arctic since 1962. The freshwater stored in that ice island could have kept the Delaware or Hudson rivers flowing for more than two years, or kept all U.S. public tap water flowing for 120 days. “While the size is not as spectacular as it was in 2010, the fact that it follows so closely to the 2010 event brings the glacier’s terminus to a location where it has not been for at least 150 years,” Muenchow said in a university press release. “Northwest Greenland and northeast Canada are warming more than five times faster than the rest of the world, but the observed warming is not proof that the diminishing ice shelf is caused by this, because air temperatures have little effect on this glacier; ocean temperatures do, and our ocean temperature time series are only five to eight years long — too short to establish a robust warming signal.”
Figure 1. The calving of a massive 46 square-mile iceberg two times the size of Manhattan from Greenland's Petermann Glacier on July 14 - 18, 2012, as seen using MODIS satellite imagery. Image credit: NASA.
Figure 2. Look familiar? Two years ago, a 100 square-mile ice island broke off the Petermann Glacier. It was the largest iceberg in the Arctic since 1962. Image taken by NASA's Aqua satellite on August 21, 2010. Image credit: NASA. I've constructed a 7-frame satellite animation available here that shows the calving and break-up of the Petermann Glacier ice island. The animation begins on August 5, 2010, and ends on September 21, with images spaced about 8 days apart. The images were taken by NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites.
Related posts
Unprecedented May heat in Greenland; update on 2011 Greenland ice melt
Greenland update for 2010: record melting and a massive calving event
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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GHB
GLOBAL
HURRICANE
BLOGERS
2:39 AM GMT on July 20, 2012
I'm pretty careful to say human-caused climate change increases the probability of certain extreme events. When discussing the crazy weather we've seen since 2010 in this post:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comm ent.html?entrynum=2022
I said, "it strains the bounds of credulity that all of the extreme weather events--some of them 1-in-1000-year type events--could have occurred without a significant change to the base climate state."
Jeff Masters
"African easterly waves have long been associated with the barotropic and baroclinic instability of the African easterly jet through meridional potential vorticity gradient reversals, which also may be achieved by concentrated convective heating of the ITCZ. A primary objective of this study is to explore whether African waves are initiated by the Charney-Stern instability in the region of reversed potential vorticity (PV) gradients, or whether convectively induced instability generates African waves, and the waves in turn enhance and organize the convection."
This one is from 2008 so it sounds like it is a bit complicated.
The global models has the x factor of the SAL in his logic operation or only the dry air ?
Global Climate Change Indicators
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Climatic Data Center
Many lines of scientific evidence show the Earth's climate is changing.
This page presents the latest information from several independent measures of observed climate change that illustrate an overwhelmingly compelling story of a planet that is undergoing global warming.
It is worth noting that increasing global temperature is only one element of observed global climate change. Precipitation patterns are also changing; storms and other extremes are changing as well.
How do we know the Earth's climate is warming?
Thousands of land and ocean temperature measurements are recorded each day around the globe. This includes measurements from climate reference stations, weather stations, ships, buoys and autonomous gliders in the oceans. These surface measurements are also supplemented with satellite measurements. These measurements are processed, examined for random and systematic errors, and then finally combined to produce a time series of global average temperature change.
A number of agencies around the world have produced datasets of global-scale changes in surface temperature using different techniques to process the data and remove measurement errors that could lead to false interpretations of temperature trends. The warming trend that is apparent in all of the independent methods of calculating global temperature change is also confirmed by other independent observations, such as the melting of mountain glaciers on every continent, reductions in the extent of snow cover, earlier blooming of plants in spring, a shorter ice season on lakes and rivers, ocean heat content, reduced arctic sea ice, and rising sea levels.
This blog about "loading the dice" in terms of climate, helps me visualize the change...
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/craps/
One of the analogies sometimes used to explain the impact of global warming on the weather is that we're "loading the dice." Perhaps a better desrciption is that we're changing the dice.
...
And this illustrates one of the greatest potential dangers of global warming. If we increase the mean temperature (and we already have), of course we increase the likelihood of extreme heat waves (and we already have). But if, in addition, global warming increases the variance of regional temperatures, then we increase the likelihood of extreme heat waves by a lot. A helluva lot. The effect was profound when we only increased the standard deviation by a factor of 1.1 - what if it increases by a factor of 1.2 or even more? The increased likelihood of extreme heat would be astounding. What's more, we would also increase the likelihood of extreme cold spells!
In fact this applies to all weather phenomena, not just temperature. Climate change is likely to change the mean value of each, and increased variance will dramatically increase the likelihood of extremes, bringing more heat waves and cold spells, more flood and drought, etc. We may, in fact, already be witnessing exactly this phenomenon. Welcome to the rest of our lives.
Radar picture from 9:36 CDT of storms rolling over my head. Lots of lightning but nothing serious. The wind wasn't even that bad even though NWS said 70mph.
And like CRS notes in the Loading the dice analogy,
well..it gloves nicely with the observations were seeing.
Good news, the N Islands still need good rainfall amount !! :)
Hey CaribBoy! What island are you on?
1) The effects of dust are not all that well understood (previous source), so they would not know how to account for it in the model.
2) There would have to be some way of including data on the dust in the model input in a timely fashion. I don't think there is a good source of information on that. The SAL satellite images I see do not seem to discriminate on the basis of actual dust. I think they just see dry air since they will indicate a SAL where there is no dust source.
But that's just my guess. Maybe someone knows for sure.
I hate El Nino so this is great news. To me, El Nino means drought in the Eastern Caribbean (and probably elsewhere in the Caribbean)
Hey :) I'm in St Maarten!
Yeah, it was extremely dry here in Jamaica and across the most Caribbean during the 2009/2010 el nino.
Could you please tell me what does that means?
El Nino is delayed.
First, here's a working link to the article.
Second, although I haven't read the entire thing word for word, I can make a few general comments on what I have read.
"We conclude plant physiology has never been properly understood or in the correct theoretical context. We have improved this understanding..."
Oh boy. Red Flag Warning... Whenever someone starts out by saying, in effect, all the accepted science in some well-studied field is dead wrong, you just know what's coming: Pseudoscience dead ahead!
And indeed we're not disappointed. The author proceeds to throw out just about everything that's known about plant physiology and biochemistry, and then to rewrite what's left to suit his own "theory".
If that weren't enough, the author then expounds on the quantum chemistry of carbon, but gets it mostly wrong. Apparently, he's never had a chemistry course where hybrid molecular orbitals and bonding theory were explained. And again, these misunderstandings are used to justify the author's particular point of view.
There's more, including mistaking correlation for causality when proposing a link between increasing CO2 concentration and higher agricultural productivity, but the above examples should suffice to give a feeling for the level of scientific understanding of the author.
So no, sorry, there's not much in that article worth examining in depth.
But since I'm likely to be accused of scientific closed-mindedness for saying that, I'll give the author one last shot...
"Science became a tool of government in the 19th century. It is largely sponsored by government and the victim of politics wherein the truth is what is said by powerful people. This has led science to make some huge blunders that it often ignores in passing."
Uhh huh...
-- EstherD
..then from mid 2010 to early 2012 it turned wetter than average thanks to La Nina condition (in my area). I really hope for at least a normal rainfall pattern to resume for the coming month..
Those are chem trails
Thanks
The first time I went to St. Maarten (1984) We spent a week in Pelican Resort (Does not exists today). I was one of those fools who stood there near the fence of the airport and the beach, to watch a 747 departure...
... And a cooler, wetter Florida during winter which I actually prefer. It all depends where you are.
The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) is one measure of the large-scale fluctuations in air pressure occurring between the western and eastern tropical Pacific (i.e., the state of the Southern Oscillation) during El Niño and La Niña episodes. Traditionally, this index has been calculated based on the differences in air pressure anomaly between Tahiti and Darwin, Australia. In general, smoothed time series of the SOI correspond very well with changes in ocean temperatures across the eastern tropical Pacific. The negative phase of the SOI represents below-normal air pressure at Tahiti and above-normal air pressure at Darwin. Prolonged periods of negative SOI values coincide with abnormally warm ocean waters across the eastern tropical Pacific typical of El Niño episodes. Prolonged periods of positive SOI values coincide with abnormally cold ocean waters across the eastern tropical Pacific typical of La Niña episodes.
Link
Sustained negative values of the SOI greater than −8 often indicate EL NINO
Sustainted positive values of the SOI greater than +8 are typical of a LA NINA
Glad you cleared that up.
Patrap gets it.
More heat = more chaos
It's really not that complicated. Just like CO2 is a heat-trapping gas and if there's more of it, there's more heat trapped.
It's un-freaking-believable that some of these points have to be "debated."
Debate all you want about the degree to which our fossil fuel burning is part of the equation, but to say it's not part of the equation is denial, ignorance or both.
It's 2012 and we have barely evolved the discussion. Our political leaders are failing us and future generations.
Why is a public beach that close to an airport?
So right now we are in a neutral phase.
Im tired.
SI,yeah
And right now is at -3.8.
I think it is for security reasons.... The PR LMM international airport track ends also in a coastal area....
Airport probably couldn't buy the lands to keep people from doing that. Or maybe they thought people wouldn't dare try that.
Staying right in the airplanes axis is dangerous... BUT despite the jetblast danger, folks really like watching takeoffs and landings just behind the runway. Most of the time nobody is injured, but sometimes accidents occurs.
pr,here is a video of those people at St Marteen Beach.
Link
Almost 30 years after... things haven't changed much lol
Hello, Nigel. I'm not sure why, but I guess when you live on a small island, you have to approach the airport from the water at some point.
Link
That seems to be a very dangerous practice
We had a terrible accident in 2009, but no one was seriously injured
Of course they are bro.
saw one of those in trinidad and tobago.
Quite a wind.
Hey Grothar! That's correct.
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