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Greenland’s meltdown taking flight

Greenland Succumbs , CounterPunch,   by ROBERT HUNZIKER,  AUGUST 19, 2020, Since the turn of the new century, every aspect of climate change has gone ballistic, up, up, and away, not looking back, leaving the 20^th century fairly harmless, but only on a relative basis, especially as compared to the rip-snorting 21^st century. It’s a whole new ballgame, starting with this new century.Society is witnessing a great acceleration of climate change way above and beyond modeling by climate scientists, and it can be frightening.

This century is shaping up to be designated an inflection point of radical change with solid evidence of trouble down the line found most recently in a rapid meltdown phase of the Greenland Ice Sheet, a target way too big to miss. It’s melting fast and faster beyond the scope of climate models, which, for reasons not fully explained, cannot keep up with the cascading ice mass.Starting with this decade, Greenland’s meltdown took flight. This is indisputable as its acceleration has a familiar ring found amongst all major ecosystems, planet-wide. In short, climate change acceleration is universal. It’s a horrifyingly dangerous threat to the integrity of life-sourcing ecosystems, like the Great Barrier Reef, three massive unprecedented bleaching events in only five years; all the result of rising ocean temperatures driven by global heat, up to 90% mortality in some locations. (Source: Australian Academy of Sciences).

Greenland represents 23 feet of sea level encased in ice up to two miles thick and will likely require hundreds or thousands of years to completely melt-down, but for current purposes that doesn’t count! What counts are the upcoming years on the way to 23 feet. And, that’s a dicey proposition when consideration is given to how far off scientists’ models have been. It’ best to brace for the worst.

In time, sea levels will surpass 1-2-3-4-5 feet, and more, but within an unknown time frame. Keep in mind even one-foot of an increase spells worldwide coastal disasters. A Noah’s Ark scenario is not needed to upend coastal cities throughout the planet………..

A “constant state of loss” means: There is no effective solution to the big meltdown. Still, according to the scientists, by curbing greenhouse gas emissions, like the CO2 emitted from automobile tailpipes and other fossil fuel consumption devices, the meltdown process could be delayed, thus giving people much more time to build seawalls as the 21^st century ushers in a new genre, “The Seawall School of Architecture.”

After all, there is no chance that emissions will be curbed. In today’s real world, it is simply not on the docket. Greenhouse gases have been accelerating ever since China decided to mix a cocktail of High-end Capitalism and the Communist Party of China; thereafter, building a brand spanking new coal-burning power plant every week like clockwork to meet capitalistic demands for cheaper products for America and the world, starting in the late 1970s.

For perspective purposes on how soon the weekly build-out of Chinese coal plants impacts climate change, keep in mind the 10/yr-to-20/yr lag effect between emissions spewed into the atmosphere and climate change impact, e.g., record high temperatures in the Arctic and Greenland and Antarctica coinciding with conspicuous acceleration of climate change over the first two decades of this century on the heels of China’s build-out of a new coal plant every week, starting 20 years prior to the new century. The dots connect……..

Not only China but also Japan plans to build 20 new coal-powered plants and India is planning numerous new coal-powered plants. And, that’s only half of today’s fossil-fuel renaissance, looking ahead thru this decade, oil barons, like Saudi Arabia and the U.S., intend to increase oil and gas production by up to 130% by 2030, meaning substantially higher CO2 emissions leading to hotter temperatures leading to higher sea levels leading to increased flooding of coastal cities.

Where’s the IPCC when it’s really needed or is it hopelessly feckless?

In truth, the underlying Greenland message is not subtle; it’s simply build seawalls, thus protecting hundreds of millions of people, businesses, and urban environments from massive flooding, and soil contamination and aquifer spoilage via salt water. Coastal cities across the world need to start constructing enormous seawalls, in some cases extending for miles beyond the city’s limits, possibly as far as an entire coastline, as rising waters find voids in structures.

Remarkably, the planet keeps on truckin’.  https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/19/greenland-succumbs/?fbclid=IwAR24WsbGuLjjW1fdwVH1KfyMr-iMLhy_dLSDSxf29k8k-aQgHxTvSaYopK8

August 20, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ARCTIC, climate change | Leave a comment

Past the tipping point: Greenland glaciers will continue to lose ice, no matter what

Warming Greenland ice sheet passes point of no return   https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200813123550.htm     Even if the climate cools, study finds, glaciers will continue to shrink.  August 13, 2020,   Source:  Ohio State University

Summary:

Nearly 40 years of satellite data from Greenland shows that glaciers on the island have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop today, the ice sheet would continue shrinking.

Nearly 40 years of satellite data from Greenland shows that glaciers on the island have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop today, the ice sheet would continue shrinking.

The finding, published today, Aug. 13, in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment, means that Greenland’s glaciers have passed a tipping point of sorts, where the snowfall that replenishes the ice sheet each year cannot keep up with the ice that is flowing into the ocean from glaciers.

“We’ve been looking at these remote sensing observations to study how ice discharge and accumulation have varied,” said Michalea King, lead author of the study and a researcher at The Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. “And what we’ve found is that the ice that’s discharging into the ocean is far surpassing the snow that’s accumulating on the surface of the ice sheet.”

King and other researchers analyzed monthly satellite data from more than 200 large glaciers draining into the ocean around Greenland. Their observations show how much ice breaks off into icebergs or melts from the glaciers into the ocean. They also show the amount of snowfall each year — the way these glaciers get replenished.

The researchers found that, throughout the 1980s and 90s, snow gained through accumulation and ice melted or calved from glaciers were mostly in balance, keeping the ice sheet intact. Through those decades, the researchers found, the ice sheets generally lost about 450 gigatons (about 450 billion tons) of ice each year from flowing outlet glaciers, which was replaced with snowfall.

“We are measuring the pulse of the ice sheet — how much ice glaciers drain at the edges of the ice sheet — which increases in the summer. And what we see is that it was relatively steady until a big increase in ice discharging to the ocean during a short five- to six-year period,” King said.

The researchers’ analysis found that the baseline of that pulse — the amount of ice being lost each year — started increasing steadily around 2000, so that the glaciers were losing about 500 gigatons each year. Snowfall did not increase at the same time, and over the last decade, the rate of ice loss from glaciers has stayed about the same — meaning the ice sheet has been losing ice more rapidly than it’s being replenished.

“Glaciers have been sensitive to seasonal melt for as long as we’ve been able to observe it, with spikes in ice discharge in the summer,” she said. “But starting in 2000, you start superimposing that seasonal melt on a higher baseline — so you’re going to get even more losses.”

Before 2000, the ice sheet would have about the same chance to gain or lose mass each year. In the current climate, the ice sheet will gain mass in only one out of every 100 years.

King said that large glaciers across Greenland have retreated about 3 kilometers on average since 1985 — “that’s a lot of distance,” she said. The glaciers have shrunk back enough that many of them are sitting in deeper water, meaning more ice is in contact with water. Warm ocean water melts glacier ice, and also makes it difficult for the glaciers to grow back to their previous positions.

That means that even if humans were somehow miraculously able to stop climate change in its tracks, ice lost from glaciers draining ice to the ocean would likely still exceed ice gained from snow accumulation, and the ice sheet would continue to shrink for some time.

“Glacier retreat has knocked the dynamics of the whole ice sheet into a constant state of loss,” said Ian Howat, a co-author on the paper, professor of earth sciences and distinguished university scholar at Ohio State. “Even if the climate were to stay the same or even get a little colder, the ice sheet would still be losing mass.”

Shrinking glaciers in Greenland are a problem for the entire planet. The ice that melts or breaks off from Greenland’s ice sheets ends up in the Atlantic Ocean — and, eventually, all of the world’s oceans. Ice from Greenland is a leading contributor to sea level rise — last year, enough ice melted or broke off from the Greenland ice sheet to cause the oceans to rise by 2.2 millimeters in just two months.

The new findings are bleak, but King said there are silver linings.

“It’s always a positive thing to learn more about glacier environments, because we can only improve our predictions for how rapidly things will change in the future,” she said. “And that can only help us with adaptation and mitigation strategies. The more we know, the better we can prepare.”

This work was supported by grants from NASA. Other Ohio State researchers who worked on this study are Salvatore Candela, Myoung Noh and Adelaide Negrete.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Ohio State University. Original written by Laura Arenschield. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Michalea D. King, Ian M. Howat, Salvatore G. Candela, Myoung J. Noh, Seonsgu Jeong, Brice P. Y. Noël, Michiel R. van den Broeke, Bert Wouters, Adelaide Negrete. Dynamic ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet driven by sustained glacier retreat. Communications Earth & Environment, 2020; 1 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s43247-020-0001-2

August 17, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ARCTIC, climate change | Leave a comment