Nicolo E. DiGirolamo, SSAI/NASA GSFC, and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory
The picture posted to the right shows two images: Greenland on July 8 and Greenland four days later. Satellite imagery found that 97% the land mass experienced an unprecedented thaw that seemed literally impossible.
A NASA published a statement yesterday, quoting Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who was analyzing radar data last week when he noticed that most of Greenland appeared to have undergone surface melting. Nghiem said, "This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: was this real or was it due to a data error?"
It now appears this was not an error at all. The NASA piece added, "This extreme melt event coincided with an unusually strong ridge of warm air, or a heat dome, over Greenland."
Lora Koenig, a NASA glaciologist who helped analyze the satellite data, said, "If we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome."
I'll go out on a limb and say it's already worrisome.
Don't worry, though, Republican policymakers have a plan: they'll bury their heads in the sand and pretend the climate science is either non-existent or part of a communist plot.
Former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) predicted this week his party is bound to wake up one of these days, and will have no choice but to address the crisis eventually. "You can hold back the facts only for so long and eventually they overwhelm you," he said.
I wish I shared his optimism, but looking at the above image, and watching Republicans continue to insist there is no problem, I'm afraid facts are losing.
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Here's something we should all get behind:
www.buildtheenterprise.org
Better then fighting ourselves, ain't it?
TEA-Republican's do not believe in global warming, educating children or providing health care to American's. TEA-Republican's hate Obama because The PPACA(Health Care Act) has already benefited the people in insurance coverage for children, extending insurance over pre-existing conditions and making insurance companies use 80 to 85 percent of monies collected for insureds rather than compensation for CEO' and CFO's. And now the CBO says the renamed RomneyCare, PPACA(Health Care Act), will save money. How outstanding is that? It is my contention that TEA-Republican's are astounded that Obama has accomplished so much in such a short period of time. From saving millions of jobs to ridding the world of Bin Ladin, Obama has numerous issues he has accomplished. People must take care in voting this November because TEA-Republicans are using the (R) when they really are (T). TEA's have a track record - Remembering Treacherous Egotistical Anarchist(TEA) are solely concerned with stopping any Obama progress at any costs. Remembering TEA party extremes say they believe in limited government, but push or allow government imposed Sonogram/Ultrasound on women. TEA party extremes say they believe in Free speech, but interrupt loudly at any meeting and have disrupted meetings in the past. TEA party extremes say they believe in the 2nd amendment while taking loaded guns openly displayed to gatherings. Tell your buddy, tell your friends to vote for president Obama!
Rudy -
Why do you persist in calling these ignoramuses the Tea Party? The original Tea Party occurred more that 200 years ago. The participants were patriots. They weren't name-callers. They did not staple tea bags to their hats. They would roll over in their graves if they could see how their honorable actions have been usurped by a group of lunatics.
Facts are facts. In the long run, they We ignore them at our peril.
Look. Everyone with an IQ of greater than ambient temperature in Greenland agrees that global climate change is real, happening, has happened, continues to happen, etc. etc. But you right wing-nuts continue to deny, burn "clean" coal by the gigaton, try to come up with some sort of semi-intelligent rational for building that oil-sand pipeline over land owned by people who don't want it and will be devastated when it springs the inevitable leak, and continue to deny everything that doesn't enhance your bottom line today. Tomorrow will take care of itself, right?
Who cares if the grandchildren are sucking smog tomorrow, as long as the bottom line is fat today!
Some Republicans will never see the facts even if they have them 1 inch from their noses. No matter how much scientific evidence you present to them, their stubbornness will make them blind to it. It is not an eyesight problem but a mind-setting one. Isn't that closing of their minds contrary to the basic principles on which America was founded? One of the things that I always loved about my adopted country, America, is the openness of mind of its populace. The willingness to listen to other opinions and even adopt them when the facts were overwhelmingly in their favor.
Total nonsense and completely false. I flew over Greenland twice in the past two weeks. It is completely covered by snow & ice. This story is total fiction. Typical MSNBC "blame the GOP and Bush" lies.
This story requires you to read it in order to comprehend what it is saying, which you clearly didn't do. And MSNBC is far from the only media outlet covering it.
I see the trolls can't add, either. 1889 plus 150 equals 2039. This is 2012, which means that this time, the surface melting is occurring 30 years earlier than the last recorded occasion. The surface melting is over the entire surface, something never noted before and is taking place much earlier in the year, too.
IF this is the ONLY occurrence and isn't repeated next year, we'll be very, very lucky...
It's amazing who reader of this sight don't even bother to check the facts:
From the NASA link: Measurements from 3 satellites showed that on July 8, about 40% of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97% of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12. In the image, the areas classified as “probable melt” (light pink) correspond to those sites where at least one satellite detected surface melting.
Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its 2-mile-thick center, experienced some degree of melting at its surface, according to measurements from three independent satellites analyzed by NASA and university scientists.
So it says the surface is undergoing some temporary melting. The ice is 2 miles thick. So there is no acceleration of melting going on and it has happened before :
Summer in Greenland has been freakishly warm so far. That’s because of frequent high pressure systems that have parked over the island, bringing warm clear weather that melts ice and snow, explained University of Georgia climatologist Thomas Mote. He and others say it’s similar to the high pressure systems that have parked over the American Midwest bringing record-breaking warmth and drought’. The term “massive” implies that the melt involved large masses of the Greenland icecap. They could have written “Sudden Extensive, Short-Term Surface Melting On the Greenland Icecap”, but instead chose to overstate what is a short-term weather event.
No Virgina, Greenland is not massively melting, it's just a temporary weather anomaly or cycle. The same thing happened back in the 1940's where it actually got warmer then present as the mean temp chart shows. The ice has undergoing SURFACE MELT, which does not effect the massive body of ice over the continent.
Once again the climate alarmists are making a mountain out of a molehill.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/news-report-nasa-sudden-massive-melt-in-greenland-my-comments-on-this-media-hype/
You would learn more of this anthropogenic global warming farce by going to this website: icecap.us. Many articles and science articles show global warming is mostly a natural event, emissions have little to do with that. In fact atmospheric density has more to do with planet warming when you consider conditions on Venus.
It's your brains that are melting from mass stupidity.