Jump to content
  • Member Statistics

    17,588
    Total Members
    7,904
    Most Online
    LopezElliana
    Newest Member
    LopezElliana
    Joined

Greenland 2012


PhillipS

Recommended Posts

No, it's just meaningless. Terry is older and isn't going to address how this doesn't matter.

The Summit can be -40F this early and set record lows under domes of high pressure with that sinking air sloping down the ice sheet. The perfect radiational cooling box for the summit and most of Greenland. On the 3rd which was 6 days ago now most of the ice sheet was still below normal in reflectivity, of course only the darkest purple/blue area's are still warm enough for melt.

The summit is 10.5K feet above sea level, or at 700mb that is pretty high up.

On Modis we can see melting is still taking place, with warm air sweeping in as I type.

http://en.wikipedia....ummit_Camp��The September average low -35C.

http://lance-modis.e...12253.terra.1km

All that was being pointed out was that it's the earliest sub -40 reading going back to at least 2004. Not to mention the month as a whole is starting off cold this is a thread about Greenland am i correct?

Edit- To add here you can see the anomaly around the time of the low.

post-1243-0-64952600-1347293773_thumb.pn

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 554
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Summit Camp is slightly above 700MB. He said it was 20C below normal, I am assume he meant Celsius since he quoted a Celsius figure. But it wasn't 20C below normal, not even close.

It was close you have to remember this happened early in the month that we are talking, but as a whole for the month -40f isn't out of the norm. As i mentioned earlier the earliest below -40 reading i could find was 9/15/04.

post-1243-0-35513200-1347321388_thumb.pn

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was close you have to remember this happened early in the month that we are talking, but as a whole for the month -40f isn't out of the norm. As i mentioned earlier the earliest below -40 reading i could find was 9/15/04.

post-1243-0-35513200-1347321388_thumb.pn

September is a transition month WORLDWIDE. Average highs and lows at the beginning of the month are much the same as the peak of summer. The END of September is significantly cooler, so this is notable for the first 1/3rd of the month. It was just the immediate interior and I'm not saying the arctic is rebounding, its just a Greenland related point of interest.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Summit weather for the last 39 days

http://www.ogimet.com/cgi-bin/gsynres?lang=en&ind=04416&ano=2012&mes=9&day=11&hora=0&min=0&ndays=30

I thought I'd seen evidence of Piteraq winds off the east coast on the 8th or 9th. It only showed up in the Environment Canada animation for a short period & I don't know if it's possible to back up those images. These very cold, very swift winds are expected (and feared) in the fall when cold air plunges down from the summit wreaking havoc with anything in it's way.

Ice in Fram Strait being blown straight off shore can indicate that a Piteraq event is unfolding, but they're usually not recorded unless they hit a weather station or pass through an inhabited area. If they coincide with a spring tide, it's possible for fast ice to be torn from the coast, this most recent event however occurred when the tides were very moderate so it's unlikely that any damage was done.

Terry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sun angle makes quite the difference when you are talking about transitional months.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0450%282001%29040%3C0741%3AADYOTO%3E2.0.CO%3B2

And also that graph your showing is for 2M temps, the summit is currently at 670mb pressure wise.

Conditions

-34 C -29 F

10.0 knots

172 degrees S

670 mb

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sun angle makes quite the difference when you are talking about transitional months.

http://journals.amet...ADYOTO>2.0.CO;2

And also that graph your showing is for 2M temps, the summit is currently at 670mb pressure wise.

Conditions

-34 C -29 F

10.0 knots

172 degrees S

670 mb

Of course it does it was an interesting observation that is all and felt it was worthy of posting here. By the way i am pretty sure the graphics take into account for elevation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Of course it does it was an interesting observation that is all and felt it was worthy of posting here. By the way i am pretty sure the graphics take into account for elevation.

It does. 2m temps do not mean they are not at low pressure. On the greenland ice sheet, 2 meters can be at under 700mb.

If the map wanted only SLP equivalent (or close) temperatures, then it would be a 1000mb temp map...and not specified as 2m temps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

alright, my bad. But it still wasn't 20C below normal.

The paper I posted has real data from the summit which for the 2nd week of September the average low was around 237-238 Kelvin or -35 to -36C.

It also shows in 1997 during the second week of September daily mean temperatures up there were around 238-240 Kelvin or -33 to -35C.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

PII2012 which had been grounded in Kane Basin is on the move again since the 13th. Tides are getting higher until they peak on the 18th so grounded ice (think south of Flade Isblink) may flow away.

The best interface for observing these small details is the arctic.io split zoom feature. Torsen has been working on making the feature more robust so give it a try.

Terry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It appears the Greenland melt is not over yet. Albedo has slightly dropped with more warmer shots of air coming in.

Greenland will be in the warm sector of multiple incoming storms possibly bringing rain to locations upwards of 1500M maybe slightly higher. As well as warm Southerly winds. Models are showing the end of Semtember to be much warmer than 2010 that had a lowered albedo, 2012 might end September even lower.

Greenland 00z GFS 1-10 Day 850mb temp anomaly's shows general warmth over the region keeping the local waters above normal and helping keep the ice melt going at the lower elevations.

00zGFS1-5day850mbTempAnomalyNA-4.gif?t=134794740300zGFS6-10day850mbTempAnomalyNA-14.gif?t=1347947408

0-3200m_Greenland_Ice_Sheet_Reflect-8.png?t=1347939317

greenlandmeltwater.jpg?t=1347937974

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If the greenland ice continues to melt then would'nt that shut down the gulf conveyor belt and stop or slow down the gulf stream?

Yea in theory the more freshwater that is dumped into the Atlantic the more it could effect the conveyor belt. If the conveyor belt were to stop we would be heading into the ice box.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

More of the Greenland melt, and the race to start mining the rare earth minerals. Fisheries changing too, because of the warming waters.

http://www.nytimes.c...tential.html?hp.

Narsaq’s largest employer, a shrimp factory, closed a few years ago after the crustaceans fled north to cooler water. Where once there were eight commercial fishing vessels, there is now one.

As a result, the population here, one of southern Greenland’s major towns, has been halved to 1,500 in just a decade. Suicides are up.

Hopefully their govt. Or people from other countries like Canada or the USA can send free therapists to help people cope with ones way of life being obliterated by the folks living in climates not yet permanently changed by this who do not realize what is happening nor realize what culture tied 100% to climate means.

After the Polar Bear fiasco, I doubt any scientists will be apart of articles with a 35 yr old human male with a rope tied around his neck hanging dead in his bathroom because the only way of life he knew to feed his family was artificially stripped from him by practice of Mankind elsewhere. Maybe realizing the diesel clunkers they fished from were helping ruin it did some of these people in. It's tragic, but I was told polar bears dying were not tragic on this forum. Maybe humans will make the cut. But that will lead to smiley faces, sarcastic comments ripping so called bleeding heart liberals like me, it's not AGW, it's the AMO, or very insulting comments about the suicide victims which typical stem from ignorance of how different their world is to ours.

The Arctic is warming even faster than other parts of the planet, and the rapidly melting ice is causing alarm among scientists about sea-level rise. In northeastern Greenland, average yearly temperature have risen 4.5 degrees in the past 15 years, and scientists predict the area could warm by 14 to 21 degrees by the end of the century.

Already, winter pack ice that covers the fjords is no longer stable enough for dog sledding and snowmobile traffic in many areas. Winter fishing, essential to feeding families, is becoming hazardous or impossible.

That is absurd.

“For me, I wouldn’t mind if the whole ice cap disappears,” said Ole Christiansen, the chief executive of NunamMinerals, Greenland’s largest homegrown mining company, as he picked his way along a proposed gold mining site up the fjord from Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. “As it melts, we’re seeing new places with very attractive geology.”

We would, kind Sir. For it would be bad for your company as the money holding worlds Govt's plunge trillions of $$$ moving hundreds of millions of humans to new settlements.

“There will be a lot of people coming from outside and that will be a big challenge since Greenlandic culture has been isolated,” said Jasper Schroder, a student home in Narsaq from university in Denmark.

Still, he supports the mine and hopes it will provide jobs and stem the rash of suicides, particularly among his peers; Greenland has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. “People in this culture don’t want to be a burden to their families if they can’t contribute,” he said.

At least more young Men won't hang it up over failing because we love our Trans-oceans and Shells.

Thanks, for posting such an informative article.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Piteraq winds have been blowing, particularly off the east coast of Greenland making it one of the few remaining northern areas to clearly show up using MODIS. The extremely low temperature winds have probably put an end to any further melt in the fjords, and they may cause things to slow down in Fram Strait north of Flade Isblink.

Terry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Friv

Tamino, as usual, does a great job when it comes to numbers - I'm in awe.

Have you seen M. Owens piece in the "models are improving" thread at Nevens. His #4 explains in detail the process I've worried about in Greenland.

"4. Eventually they melt out enough ice in this basal layer that the remaining support columns of ice are crushed under the weight of up to 3km of ice above. The liquid ice slurry in the base layer is forced back up the tunnels and cracks, and out horizontally along ice-rock interface, as well as down, breaking up some of the rock bed and sediment layers."

He's showing a process where the physical structure of the rocky structures now protecting the ice sheet could be breached during melt. This is what I was refering to when I said that the terrain would have to be altered for the ice cap to experience very rapid disintegration.

The saddle area is the region most at risk I think, but if the grounding areas beneath Humboldt are nothing but gravel/sediment, and this can be flushed out by what Owens refers to as "basal slurry", the whole cap could break up much sooner than is presently predicted.

Terry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Greenland is still pouring out fresh melt water at lower elevations and latitudes. The -AO is a major culprit as well as the very warm NW Atlantic waters.

http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c01.2012290.terra.1km.jpg

http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c02.2012290.terra.500m

The weather is favorable for more late season melt the next 10 days.

http://raleighwx.americanwx.com/models/00zgfs.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...