Mysterious Zones of The Arctic - 6

Fig. 1 Late March

I. Ice One

The desperate deniers are doing the same thing with a recent glacial event in Greenland that they are doing with the four-page Barr report about the multiple hundreds of pages of the Mueller report.

They are exaggerating at best, blatantly lying at worst.

A paper reported at Live Science points out that the ice face and grounding line of the Jakobshavn glacier has been retreating for a long time, that is, since the ice shelf holding the glacier back, broke away and disappeared in the early 2000's.

That started about a 15 year retreat, but then circa 2016 the Jakobshavn glacier began to thicken and move forward again.

In other words, more ice was detected in it, beginning at its terminus then extending back some distance toward its source, the Greenland ice sheet.

This could be, among other things, a phenomenon of more of the ice sheet flowing out, or it could also be because the tidal waters in contact with the glacier have cooled.

Either way, as in financial net worth, the bottom line is the one to ponder:

"Preliminary data reported from the reference glaciers of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) in 2018 from Argentina, Austria, China, France, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and United States indicate that 2018 will be the 30th consecutive year of significant negative annual balance (> -200mm); with a mean balance of -1247 mm for the 25 reporting reference glaciers, with only one glacier reporting a positive mass balance ..."

(Alpine glaciers: Another decade of loss, emphasis added). An increase in overall ice mass-loss for some thirty years in a row is a trend by any standard.

The bottom line with the "Jakobshavn is stretching" paper indicates that same trend:

“But, as mentioned, the glacier [Jakobshavn] is still contributing to ocean level rise worldwide, as it’s still losing more ice to the ocean than it is gaining from snow accumulation, the researchers said.”

(Live Science, emphasis added). Ice sheet mass balance is the subject which those who can’t fathom this issue need to study:

"The mass balance of a glacier or ice sheet is the net balance between the

Fig. 2 Early March

mass gained by snow deposition, and the loss of mass by melting (either at the glacier surface or under the floating ice shelves or ice tongues) and calving (production of icebergs). A negative mass balance means that a glacier is losing mass, and, for grounded glaciers and ice sheets, this mass loss directly contributes to sea level rise (the melting of floating ice shelves and ice tongues does not contribute to sea level rise, because of the lower density of ice as compared to water, which determines the floating portion of the ice). This is one of the reasons why it is important, under a warming climate, to have accurate estimates of the mass balance of glaciers and ice sheets."

(ISMASS). That the denier realm made lot’s of comments in the media with little if any value is telling.

They are parroting the dullards in congress and the administration.

They are inspired by those who can’t balance their own check book but are quick to fail to realize the reality of the main issue: ice sheet mass-balance. 

II. Ice Two

I recently wondered if the Arctic-watching satellite was having measurement problems.

I wrote about my concern about that and the sea ice pattern in the Arctic status report in early March (Mysterious Zones of The Arctic - 4).

As it turns out, comparing Fig. 1 with  Fig. 2 shows that the Arctic sea ice is going through a similar trend and process as all glaciers and sea ice do.

That is, they are in a long term trend of losing mass, which is to say losing ice quantity by melting or, in the case of glaciers melting and calving.

III. Ice Three

The big picture in this ice-mass-loss trend is and will continue to be what is happening in Antarctica.

Eventually, Antarctica will become the location of the most ice-mass loss and source of sea level change, overtaking Greenland which is the current record holder (Mysterious Zones of Antarctica, 2, 3, 4).

IV. Ice Collusion

The propaganda engines of Oil-Qaeda will continue as they have for decades to distort the cognition of feeble minds (Humble Oil-Qaeda, Smoke & Fumes).

Groundhog Day (the movie) is in the DNA of the politicians (Groundhog Day & The Climate of Fear, 2, 3).

Nevertheless, don't purchase land with high tide lines on it (i.e. on the bonny coast) if you want to avoid these problematic trends  (Pentagon releases list of military bases most at risk [in the USA] to climate change, Countries With Sea Level Change - 3).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Lyrics to Bonny Portmore here.

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