Search Results for “greenland”

Greenland’s 2022-’23 Ice Coverage Well Above 1981-2010 Average Despite ‘Global Boiling’ Rhetoric

September 5, 2023

https://notrickszone.com/2023/08/31/greenlands-2022-23-ice-coverage-well-above-1981-2010-average-despite-global-boiling-rhetoric/ By Kenneth Richard Since the early 2000s there has been no net change in the Greenland ice sheet mean annual surface temperature, as well as no net change in melt extent percentage. Greenland’s ice coverage was, for most of this year (September 1, 2022 to August 31, 2023), observed to be significantly above the long-term (1981-2010) climate average. The Greenland ice sheet didn’t even cooperate with the narrative during the “global boiling” melt months of July and August. Image Source: PolarPortal Greenland has been defying the narrative for decades now. After a brief, sharp warming from 1994 to the early 2000s, the mean annual land surface temperatures (LST) have been trendless since about 2003. Since 2012, Greenland has been cooling (Fang et al., 2023). Compare the colorized Greenland temperature trends lineup for 2007-2012 to the 2013-2020 period (bottom). Image Source: Fang et al., 2023 A trendless temperature record also manifests as non-significant change in melt extent as a percentage of surface area as well as the the mass balance for the whole ice sheet, especially from about 2005 onwards. Image Source: Fang et al., 2023 Other scientists have also reported Greenland warming “is not evident” (Matsumura et al., 2022) in recent decades. Instead, temperature stations document net cooling trends from 2001-2019 (Hanna et al., 2021). Image Source: Matsumura et al., 2022 Image Source: Hanna et al., 2021

Greenland Ice Sheet Recovers as Scientists Say Earlier Loss was Due to Natural Warming Not CO2 Emissions

October 7, 2022

https://dailysceptic.org/2022/10/02/climate-bombshell-greenland-ice-sheet-recovers-as-scientists-say-earlier-loss-was-due-to-natural-warming-not-co2-emissions/ BY CHRIS MORRISON A popular scare story running in the media is that the Greenland ice sheet is about to slip its moorings under ferocious and unprecedented Arctic heat and arrive in the reader’s front room any day now (I exaggerate, but not much). Meanwhile back in the scientific world, scientists are scrambling to understand what natural causes lie behind the sudden slow-down in Greenland’s summer warming and ice loss dating back to 2010. The recovery of Arctic summer sea ice has been spectacular of late, with the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Center reporting that this year’s September minimum was 1.28 million square kilometres higher than the 2012 low point of 3.39 million square kilometres. Three Japanese climatologists have recently published a paper noting that “frequent occurrence of central Pacific El Niño events has played a key role in the [abrupt] slow-down of Greenland warming and possibly Arctic sea ice loss”. Of course such findings play havoc with the simplistic ‘settled’ science notion that carbon dioxide produced by humans burning fossil fuel is the main, if not only, driver of global temperature warming or cooling – a notion that leads many green activists to claim that the climate will stop changing if society signs on to a ‘Net Zero’ CO2 emissions agenda. For instance, a bizarre ‘fact check’ on a recently published Daily Sceptic article by Facebook partner Climate Feedback claimed there had been no natural climate change for almost 200 years. It quoted Professor Timothy Osborn of the University of East Anglia, who said: “The warming from the late 1800s to the present is all due to human-caused climate change, because natural factors have changed little since then, and even would have caused a slight cooling over the last 70 years rather than the warming we have observed.” The Japanese scientists argue that they have been able to show that El Niño natural weather oscillations have driven “atmospheric teleconnection” and shifted the tropical rainfall zone to the north. The higher warming up to 2012 was “accelerated” by heat from the Pacific and a phase in the North Atlantic sea current oscillation that favoured warmer conditions over Greenland and enhanced ice melt. Changes around Greenland can be attributed to “natural variability, rather than anthropogenic forcing”, note the scientists, “although most climate models were unable to reasonably simulate the unforced natural variability over Greenland”. What the scientists are talking about of course are the huge heat exchanges that regularly change the climate of the Earth. As the Daily Sceptic recently reported, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT noted that the Earth had many climate regimes, and there have been “profound” changes in temperature between the tropics and the polar regions over millennia. Meteorologist William Kininmonth recently argued that the heat exchanges were little understood, but they are one of the great drivers of climate changes. It might be suggested that these gaps in climate knowledge have allowed a view to take hold, now enforced by rigid Net Zero political control, that CO2 is the only driver of climate change. The Daily Sceptic recently reported on a series of media scare stories about the Greenland ice sheet that followed publication of a paper in Nature Climate Change. Cherry-picking the one-off record melt year of 2012, and assuming it will be a regular occurrence, delivered a “staggering” 78cm of sea level rise between now and 2100. According to the U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts, the claims were “false and easily disproved”. In his view they were “just modelled hokum”. Ice amounts around the Arctic have always been highly cyclical, with periods of substantial melt and freezing common across just a few decades. As we have seen, evidence is starting to build that a recent Arctic low point is in a period of recovery, with a significant trend towards higher surface sea ice becoming apparent from the recent data. To preserve the fiction that humans are responsible for all recent changes in the climate, it is often argued that the current temperature is the highest for 12,000 years, since the last major ice age started to lift. This is political nonsense-on-stilts, not least because geologists have a phrase for the period when temperatures were much higher than today – the Holocene Thermal Maximum. The latest science paper to show significant higher temperatures comes from a group of geoscientists led by Dr. Katrine Elnegaard Hansen of Aarhus University. According to a précis published by the No Tricks Zone climate site, the Arctic and northern Greenland were 2-4°C warmer than now between 11,700 to 4,500 years ago. Carbon dioxide levels were in the mid 200 parts per million (ppm), compared to today’s 419 ppm, ice-free open waters prevailed, and Greenland warmed 10°C in just 60 years. Numerous other scientists have discovered equally dramatic temperature changes in the recent past. The graph below was presented by a German broadcaster in 2013 and was compiled from a number of science sources. It shows the overall long-term trend, ending in the current small rebound from the so-called little ice age, But cyclical changes have also occurred over very short periods. A number of scientists have pointed to an abrupt global multiple degree cooling and warming period that occurred about 8,200 years ago over 150 years. Dr. Takuro Kobashi examined the paleoclimatic records from this time and found a drop of 3°C within two decades, followed by a similar rise over 70 years. Dr. Seren Griffiths of Manchester Met University reported that the event was first identified in Greenland ice cores, but subsequently noted in multiple proxies across Europe. Another abrupt cooling period is said to have occurred about 4,000 years ago. It is legitimate to conclude from all this under-reported science that it is becoming increasingly difficult to ask us to believe that CO2, and more specifically human-caused CO2, is the only or main climate control thermostat. The evidence suggests that the gas played no such starring role in the previous 11,000 years and more of the paleoclimatic record. Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Meteorologist rips media claims: Why ‘Zombie Ice’ & other claims of Greenland ice melt raising sea levels are just modeled hokum

August 30, 2022

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/08/30/why-zombie-ice-and-other-claims-of-greenland-ice-melt-raising-sea-levels-are-just-modeled-hokum/ By Anthony Watts: From the check your Chinese soot before you check your CO2 driven climate model department. One of the dumbest climate claims this week is “Zombie Ice” from the ever alarmed and almost always wrong Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press. He of course just made up the term “Zombie Ice” to grab headlines. It doesn’t exist in the science study. Other headlines such as this one in the Washington Post are less ridiculous. On Monday, August 29, 2022, The Washington Post (WaPo) made a claim that melting ice on the Greenland ice sheet would raise global sea level by one foot by the year 2050 or possibly 2100. This is false, and easily disproven. One of the favorite scare stories that has continued to circulate about effects of climate change is the never-ending alarm over future sea level rise. Back in 1989, when today’s catch-all phrase of “climate change” was known as “global warming,” there was this prediction from the United Nations (UN) covered in an Associated Press story. “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.” That claim voiced by the UN official was based on computer models projecting future sea levels. Obviously, the models were wrong, because that claim never happened. Today, 22 years past the due date, not one country, not even a city, has been “wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels.” Today, we have the same old scare story; computer models designed and interpreted by humans who fully believe what they programmed, are used to make a scare story in major media. First, let’s look at the claim in the headline: Greenland ice sheet set to raise sea levels by nearly a foot, study finds Sounds dire, doesn’t it? Surely some low-level places built right next to the sea would be flooded if that happened. In the body of the story, they say this, bolds mine: Human-driven climate change has set in motion massive ice losses in Greenland that couldn’t be halted even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, according to a new study published Monday. The findings in Nature Climate Change project that it is now inevitable that 3.3 percent of the Greenland ice sheet will melt — equal to 110 trillion tons of ice, the researchers said. That will trigger nearly a foot of global sea-level rise. The predictions are more dire than other forecasts, though they use different assumptions. While the study did not specify a time frame for the melting and sea-level rise, the authors suggested much of it can play out between now and the year 2100. There is no time frame specified for the one foot of claimed rise? How can peer-reviewed climate science be so imprecise? 110 trillion tons of ice? That sounds unimaginably large, and most people can’t even begin to understand the magnitude of that. For most people, the number alone is scary. First let’s tackle the big scary “110 trillion tons of ice” number that will supposedly be melted. In our companion website, Climate at a Glance (CAAG) we have already debunked this issue in Climate at a Glance: Greenland Ice Melt. The key point to consider is this: When recent ice loss is compared to the full Greenland ice sheet, the loss is so small that it is almost undetectable. Over the past couple of decades, claims of ice melt in Greenland have been used to bolster fears of runaway sea-level rise. For example, NASA scientists said the following about the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets: “The two regions have lost 6.4 trillion tons of ice in three decades; unabated, this rate of melting could cause flooding that affects hundreds of millions of people by 2100.” Although several trillion tons of ice sounds like massive ice loss, it amounts to less than 1 percent of Greenland’s total ice mass. As shown in Figure 1, the total ice loss each year is nearly undetectable, coming in at just 0.005 percent of the Greenland ice sheet. Figure 1. A comparison of presentations of satellite data capturing Greenland’s ice mass loss. The image on the right shows changes in Greenland’s ice mass relative to Greenland’s total ice mass. Sources: The data plotted in these graphs are from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-Comparison Exercise, a joint exercise by NASA and the European Space Agency.4 Graphs originally by Willis Eschenbach. Adapted and annotated by Anthony Watts. As you can see, even if the 3% number projected by the computer model for some time in the future were to actually come true, it is still miniscule compared to all of the ice in Greenland. But, there are two very important real-world things that are not covered in the new study. The first is weather patterns, and the second is black carbon soot. Weather patterns, not climate change, determine if ice will melt in Greenland or not. In July 2021 alarm was raised about a one-day weather event in Greenland during the summer when cloud cover lifted and the sun came out, melting the surface layer. Greenland: Enough Ice Melted on Single Day to Cover Florida in Two Inches of Water, claimed The Guardian. It was yet another climate scare-story, and what they didn’t tell you was that the very next day, all that melted water re-froze when the clouds returned. The water never made it to the ocean. The new study cited by WaPo simply doesn’t factor in weather patterns, but assumes a simple linear causation from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warming the planet enough to cause enough melt to raise sea-level by a foot sometime in the future, maybe by 2050, maybe by 2100 – they aren’t sure as both dates were used in the article. The other factor not considered is black carbon soot being deposited on the Greenland ice sheet. Both forest fires and increased industrialization factor into that soot. The black carbon soot absorbs more sunlight, thus increasing heat retention from sunlight, and enhances melting. Another peer reviewed study says Asia’s booming coal based economy is a primary cause of the soot being deposited in the Arctic, including Greenland. They say: Snow and sea ice are two of the most reflective surfaces occurring naturally on planet Earth. Light absorbing aerosols, such as wind blown black carbon, that stick to these pristine surfaces can make them less reflective, thus converting more sunlight into heat. The added heat leads to increased surface temperatures and is detrimental to the Arctic climate. Note in the Figure 1 graph how the ice melt really doesn’t start until around the year 2001. If climate change was really the cause, you would be seeing ice melt all the way back to 1980, because global carbon dioxide levels have been steadily increasing and supposedly warming the planet since then. What really happened around the year 2001 becomes abundantly clear in Figure 2. Figure 2. Source: Our World in Data, China energy mix. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-region?stackMode=absolute&country=~CHN Figure 2 shows China’s use of coal really took off around 2001, and as most anyone knows, coal produces significant amounts of soot when burned, which is why it has been dubbed as a “dirty fuel.” It doesn’t take a PhD in climate science to notice the clear correlation between China’s coal use, soot production, and Greenland ice melt post 2001. The new study cited by WaPo misses that completely. What will happen in the future if China uses less coal and produces less soot? Finally, let’s run the numbers so far and without the aid of billion-dollar supercomputers, we can make our own simple math model for projecting sea level rise into the future. From Climate at a Glance: Sea Level Rise we have these numbers: Global sea level has been rising since at least the mid-1800s, and data show there has been only minor recent acceleration. NASA satellite instruments, with readings dating back to 1993, show global sea level rising at a pace of merely 1.2 inches per decade, even post 2001 with the additional melt from Greenland. So, if we choose 2050 as the end date for the purported 1 foot of sea level rise the math works out to be: 2050-2022= 28 years. We’ll round that to three decades. 3 decades x 1.2”/decade = 3.6” by 2050 Or for the year 2100 we have: 2100-2022= 78 years. We’ll round that to eight decades. 8 decades x 1.2”/decade = 9.6” by 2100 No matter what end date you choose, you still can’t get to 1 foot of sea level rise cited by the study. And since the study can’t even put a date in place for that, nor do they consider soot, weather patterns, or changes to energy production, especially in China, the study is little more than an exercise in guessing wrapped up in a peer-reviewed paper to give sort of sense of credulity for unquestioning reporters. And here is something the zombie, er, one-track-mind reporters like Seth Borenstein and Chris Mooney won’t tell you. “The Greenland ice sheet gained a record-breaking 7 gigatons of snow/ice yesterday, the most during any summer month since the early-1980s. Journos are selective, they’ll report on a day of record melt, but you can bet your hard-earned dollar this won’t make any major headlines.” (h/t Chris Martz on Twitter) Looking back to the impossible, irresponsible, and falsified sea-level claim made in 1989, the present day articles from WaPo and AP reminds me of the greatest quote from Yogi Berra ever: ‘It’s Deja Vu All Over Again’ Note: Some parts of this essay originally appeared on Climate Realism – Anthony

New Study: Greenland ‘Must Have Been At Least 3°C Warmer’ Than Today During The Early Holocene

July 8, 2022

https://notrickszone.com/2022/07/04/new-study-greenland-must-have-been-at-least-3c-warmer-than-today-during-the-early-holocene/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-study-greenland-must-have-been-at-least-3c-warmer-than-today-during-the-early-holocene By Kenneth Richard These much warmer Greenland temperatures imply that the elevation of the ice sheet was 400 meters lower than it is today from about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. Scientists (Westhoff et al., 2022) report that the two largest Greenland melt events in the last few hundred years occurred in 2012 and in 1889 CE – when atmospheric CO2 levels were still under 300 ppm. The “melt events around the Holocene Climate Optimum were more intense and more frequent” than has been observed during the modern period. And the most prominent melt events of the last 10,000 years centered around the Medieval Warm Period, 986 CE. Overall, the elevation of the Greenland ice sheet has grown by 0.4 km since the Early Holocene, as “summer temperatures must have been at least 3 ± 0.6°C warmer during the Early Holocene compared to today.” Image Source: Westhoff et al., 2022 Share this…

Recent Greenland Cooling And Only ‘Limited Retreat’ Of Glaciers Since The Little Ice Age

June 24, 2022

https://notrickszone.com/2022/06/13/recent-greenland-cooling-and-only-limited-retreat-of-glaciers-since-the-little-ice-age/ By Kenneth Richard More evidence surfaces showing Greenland isn’t cooperating with the global warming narrative. The notorious “Climategate” e-mail exchanges between activist scientists like Drs. Phil Jones and Tom Wigley revealed how grave a concern it was in 2004 that “GREENLAND HAS BEEN COOLING SIGNIFICANTLY” since the 1950s. “…a warming trend occurred in the Nuuk fjord during the first 50 years of the 1900s, followed by a cooling over the second part of the century, when the average annual temperatures decreased by approximately 1.5°C.” “…whatever the rest of the Northern Hemisphere may be doing, the part that holds the lion’s share of the hemisphere’s ice has been cooling for the past half-century, and at a very significant rate…” “Greenland’s temperature trend of the past half-century has been just the opposite — and strikingly so — of that of which is claimed for the Northern Hemisphere and the world by the IPCC and its climate alarmist friends.” “[Greenland cooling] presents these folks with a double problem, as they have historically claimed that high northern latitudes should be the first to exhibit convincing evidence of CO2-induced global warming.” Image Source: FOIA A 2016 analysis of Greenland ice sheet melt attribution indicated any contribution from anthropogenic climate forcing was still “too small to be detected”. Image Source: Haine, 2016 NTZ recently highlighted a study showing (a) West and central Greenland cooled by about 1°C from 2010 to 2020 (see JRA55 SAT trend image), (b) Arctic sea ice melt has “slowed” or stalled since 2007 with “no new records” since 2012, and (c) Greenland warming peaks in 2012 but “is not evident during the last two decades”. Image Source: Matsumura et al., 2021 Now a new study reports there has only been “limited retreat” of southeastern Greenland glaciers since the 1600s-1800s CE (Little Ice Age) maximum ice extent. There is evidence this same region “likely remained ice free” throughout the Early Holocene. Iceberg rafting and low sea ice are indicative of climate trends over the Holocene. Notice the graphical image shows sea ice in this region is only slightly below the Little Ice Age peak and is still one of the higher extents of the last 9,000 years. Also see the iceberg rafting trends (bottom graph). Rafting frequency increases due to warmer temperatures and rapid glacier melt, and the most recent iceberg rafting has also been among the lowest of the last 9,000 years. Image Source: Andresen et al., 2022 As Professor Phil Jones wrote in 2004, “Clearly, someone forgot to tell Greenland what it’s supposed to be doing”.

Newly-discovered SE Greenland polar bear subpopulation: another assumption proven false – Polar bear numbers increased despite ‘impending doom based on implausible climate models’

June 24, 2022

https://polarbearscience.com/2022/06/16/newly-discovered-se-greenland-polar-bear-subpopulation-another-assumption-proven-false/ Researchers have discovered that the 300 or so polar bears living in SE Greenland (below 64 degrees N) are so genetically distinct and geographically isolated that they qualify as a unique subpopulation, adding one more to the 19 subpopulations currently described by the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group. NASA photo, SE Greenland glacier-front habitat with a polar bear and two cubs. Previously, polar bear researchers simply assumed all of the bears in East Greenland were part of the same subpopulation but no field work had been conducted in the extreme southern area until 2015-2017. When they included this region, they got a big surprise: now they are spinning it as significant for polar bear conservation (Laidre et al. 2022). From a new paper by Kristin Laidre and colleagues today in the journal Science, the map below shows this newly-defined population in red in SE Greenland (south of 64 degrees N), which is known as the King Frederick VI Coast: Background Apparently the few bears found on the southwestern tip of Greenland, near the former Norse ‘Eastern Settlement’ (dark blue in the above map) do not belong to this new subpopulation, which means that recent problems on the SW tip of Greenland–including a horse that was killed in the winter of 2016–cannot be blamed on members of this new subpopulation. My own work on ancient polar bear remains did not reveal any archaeological specimens from that region (Crockford 2022). There are only a few known ancient Inuit sites in the area, primarily around Timmiarmiit. Danish naval officer Wilhelm August Graah explored the SE coast in 1828-30 while looking for the lost Norse Eastern Settlement and, having rounded the tip at Cape Farewell, described the now-extinct SE Greenland Inuit (Graah 1837). In 1929, he named the region the King Frederick VI Coast but was prevented from travelling further than the area of Koge Bay (see map above) by thick pack ice. Currently, the largest community on the SE coast is further north, at Tasiilaq, but the realm of SE Greenland polar bears is currently uninhabited by humans. Few hunters venture so far south, even temporarily. The New Population Thomas W. Johansen NASA photo. This newly-discovered population of SE Greenland bears apparently uses marine-terminating glacier fronts (including calved pieces of freshwater glaciers) that exist in deep coastal fjords as platforms to hunt ringed seals when the land-locked fast ice disappears. As they also do in Svalbard, some ringed seals use glacier-front habitat year round, likely because the presence of ice generates upwelling of nutrients and thus, fish to eat (Hamilton et al. 2016, 2017). In other words, ringed seals and polar bears throughout the Arctic are almost certainly capable of utilizing glacier-front habitats where ever they occur, as they have been doing in SE Greenland. According to the authors: Southeast Greenland bears appear to have adapted their movements to the region’s specific physical geography. The high-velocity East Greenland Coastal Current (12) seasonally brings a narrow band of low-concentration pack ice south of 64°N and around the southern tip of Greenland (figs. S8 to S10) (13). All tracked Southeast Greenland bears that moved out of the fjords (n = 11) became caught in this current’s drift ice and were transported southward toward Cape Farewell, drifting an average of 189 km in <2 weeks (fig. S4). Notably, all swam ashore and walked via land to their home fjord within 1 to 2 months, demonstrating high site fidelity. Bears in Southeast Greenland must remain inside fjords or risk export to human inhabited areas of South Greenland or into the North Atlantic. Lairdre et al. 2022:1333. The map above from the Laidre paper shows the genetic distinctiveness of this subpopulation (‘SEG’). Evidence of some immigration from the north indicates the group is not totally isolated and the authors mention that new immigrants soon learn to live in this glacier-front environment (Laidre et al. 2022:1337). However, the genetic data also indicate the subpopulation has been separate for only about 200 years (189-264). This suggests to me the possibility that the thick ice at around 65 degrees N that stopped the northward travel of Graah in 1829 mentioned above may have been a decades-long phenomenon that also trapped polar bears on the SE coast and kept them entirely separate from NE Greenland bears until very recently. The authors did not mention this as a possibility: in fact, they didn’t provide any explanation at all for why the populations became separated about 200 years ago or comment why such distinctive genetic signatures would be evident after such a short period of evolutionary time. Of course, the authors suggest this new subpopulation–although unnoticed by them for decades while easily surviving an ice-free period similar to conditions predicted for the High Arctic in the late 2100s–must be conserved to protect the genetic diversity of the species (Peacock 2022). In other words, they see it primarily as welcome additional pressure to protect polar bears from global warming. Peacock concludes [my bold]: It is unclear whether the Agreement [1973 International Agreement to Protect the Polar Bear], which had been so successful in bringing back the global populations from overharvest, will be an adequate mechanism to protect polar bears in the face of reduced habitat due to climate change. The population of southeast Greenland is a small, genetically distinct group of bears with a distinctive ecology. In the conservation of this polar bear population, we find an explicit test of the modern influence of the half-century-old international Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears. Peacock 2022: 1268 I truly appreciate Lily Peacock’s acknowledgement that polar bear numbers have indeed increased since the 1960s, as I have been criticized for pointing that out (Crockford 2017, 2019; Crockford and Geist 2018). Leaving aside all the pointless hand-wringing about impending doom based on implausible climate models, the existence of this new subpopulation is interesting but hardly a game-changer. In two papers and several press releases, there is no mention of the fact that polar bears in general were savvy and flexible enough to have survived through several warm interglacials that were warmer than today (Cronin et al. 2014; Cronin and Cronin 2015) or that many Svalbard bears recently moved onto the sea ice or to Franz Josef Land when sea ice on the west coast of the archipelago became scarce (Aars et al. 2017; Andersen et al. 2012; Crockford 2019). Bottom line: I’m OK with 20 subpopulations of polar bears and satisfied that adding SE Greenland to the mix, separate from NE Greenland, is the right thing to do. I’m thrilled to see evidence that glacier-front habitat can support a small polar bear population even without summer sea ice. Now let’s see the population size estimate for all of East Greenland we’ve been waiting to see for more than ten years (Laidre et al. 2012). Are there only about 600 bears (as one PBGS estimate put it) or about 2,000 (the ball-park estimate used by the 2015 Red List assessment)? Or are there even more? References Aars, J., Marques,T.A, Lone, K., Anderson, M., Wiig, Ø., Fløystad, I.M.B., Hagen, S.B. and Buckland, S.T. 2017. The number and distribution of polar bears in the western Barents Sea. Polar Research 36:1. 1374125. doi:10.1080/17518369.2017.1374125 Andersen, M., Derocher, A.E., Wiig, Ø. and Aars, J. 2012. Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) maternity den distribution in Svalbard, Norway. Polar Biology 35:499-508. Crockford, S.J. 2017. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprints 2 March 2017. Doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v3 Open access. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v3 Crockford, S.J. 2019. The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. Global Warming Policy Foundation, London. Available in paperback and ebook formats. Crockford, S. J. 2022. Polar bear fossil and archaeological records from the Pleistocene and Holocene in relation to sea ice extent and open water polynyas. Open Quaternary 8(7): 1-26. https://doi.org.10.5334/oq.107 Crockford, S.J. and Geist, V. 2018. Conservation Fiasco. Range Magazine, Winter 2017/2018, pg. 26-27. Pdf here. Cronin, M.A., Rincon, G., Meredith, R.W., MacNeil, M.D., Islas-Trejo, A., Cánovas, A. and Medrano, J. F. 2014. Molecular phylogeny and SNP variation of polar bears (Ursus maritimus), brown bears (U. arctos), and black bears (U. americanus) derived from genome sequences. Journal of Heredity 105(3):312-323. http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/01/28/jhered.est133.abstract Cronin, T. M. and Cronin, M.A. 2015. Biological response to climate change in the Arctic Ocean: the view from the past. Arktos 1:1-18 [Open access] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41063-015-0019-3 Graah W.A. 1837. Narrative of an Expedition to the East Coast of Greenland, Sent by Order of the King of Denmark, in Search of the Lost Colonies, Under the Command of Captn. W. A. Graah (J. W. Parker, 1837). Hamilton, C.D., Kovacs, K.M., Ims, R.A., Aars, J. and Lydersen, C. 2016. Coastal habitat use by ringed seals Pusa hispida following a regional sea-ice collapse: Importance of glacial refugia in a changing Arctic. Marine Ecology Progress Series 545:261-277. Hamilton, C.D., Kovacs, K.M., Ims, R.A., Aars, J. and Lydersen, C. 2017. An Arctic predator–prey system in flux: climate change impacts on coastal space use by polar bears and ringed seals. Journal of Animal Ecology 86:1054–1064. Laidre, K.L., Born, E.W., Gurarie, E., Wiig, O., Dietz, R. and Stern, H. 2012. Females roam while males patrol: divergence in breeding season movements of pack ice polar bears (Ursus maritimus). Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280: 1-10. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2012.2371 Open access http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1752/20122371 Laidre, K.L., Supple, M.A., Born, E.W., et al. 2022. Glacial ice supports a distinct and undocumented polar bear subpopulation persisting in late 21st century sea-ice conditions. Science 376(6599):1333-1338. Supplementary pdf here. Peacock, E. 2022. A new polar bear population: Can the international conservation agreement protect these bears? Science 376(6599):1267-1268. SHARE THIS: Twitter Facebook Pinterest2 Tumblr Reddit Email Loading… RELATED New polar bear subpopulation update: more background facts and details from the paperJune 19, 2022In “Advocacy” East Greenland polar bears – said to be the most polluted but appear to be doing just fineFebruary 4, 2015In “Life History” Global population size estimates for polar bears clash with extinction predictionsOctober 31, 2021In “Advocacy” This entry was posted in Life History, Population, Sea ice habitat and tagged genetically distinct, genetics, glaciers, Greenland, IUCN, movements, new subpopulation. Bookmark the permalink. Comments are closed. Search for: SUPPORT POLAR BEAR SCIENCE CLICK IMAGE TO BUY

Greenland’s Summers Surprisingly Cooling Over Past Decade…Driven By Natural Oceanic Cycles

June 14, 2022

https://notrickszone.com/2022/06/12/greenlands-summers-surprisingly-cooling-over-past-decade-driven-by-natural-oceanic-cycles/ By P Gosselin Science Daily here reports: “Climate changes in the tropical Pacific have temporarily put the brakes on rapid warming and ice melting in Greenland.“ Science Daily adds: “A puzzling, decade-long slowdown in summer warming across Greenland has been explained by researchers at Hokkaido University in Japan. Their observational analysis and computer simulations revealed that changes in sea surface temperature in the tropical Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles to the south, trigger cooler summer temperatures across Greenland. The results, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, will help improve future predictions of Greenland ice sheet and Arctic sea ice melting in coming decades.” Greenland GC-Net Swiss Camp JJA summer temperatures. Source: Hanna et al, 2020. Temperatures have dropped off rapidly since 2012. Cropped from Klimaschau. Apparently this is connected to changes to the El Niño climate pattern in the Pacific, say the researchers, and these powerful Pacific cycles have ramifications for weather and climate patterns around the globe. “The findings, and the slowdown in Greenland’s summertime warming, do not undermine the seriousness of climate change or the need to tackle greenhouse gas emissions,” Matsumura insists. But the scientists admit that the cooler summers in Greenland have been unexpected They also need to need to start admitting that they’ve been severely underestimating these powerful natural oceanic cycles, naively thinking that CO2 drives the whole show. “We expect that global warming and ice sheet melting in Greenland and the rest of the Arctic will accelerate even further in the future due to the effects of anthropogenic warming,” Matsumura says. And Matsumura will keep telling us that – until, that is, the next natural cycles bury man’s modest impact once again. A trace gas is no match for the gigantic, still mysterious thermal fluxes of the oceans…a phenomenon for which we have little historical data and remains poorly understood. Also read here.

Greenland Ice Sheet Melting No Faster than Last Century

November 23, 2021

https://www.scienceunderattack.com/blog/2021/11/1/ice-sheet-update-2-greenland-ice-sheet-melting-no-faster-than-last-century-89 By Physicist Dr. Ralph Alexander The climate doomsday machine makes much more noise about warming-induced melting of Greenland’s ice sheet than Antarctica’s, even though the Greenland sheet holds only about 10% as much ice. That’s because the smaller Greenland ice sheet is melting at a faster rate and contributes more to sea level rise. But the melt rate is no faster today than it was 90 years ago and appears to have slowed over the last few years. The ice sheet, 2-3 km (6,600-9,800 feet) thick, consists of layers of compressed snow built up over at least hundreds of thousands of years. Melting takes place only during Greenland’s late spring and summer, the meltwater running over the ice sheet surface into the ocean, as well as funneling its way down through thick glaciers, helping speed up their flow toward the sea. In addition to summer melting, the sheet loses ice at its edges from calving or breaking off of icebergs, and from submarine melting by warm seawater. Apart from these losses, a small amount of ice is gained over the long winter from the accumulation of compacted snow at high altitudes in the island’s interior. The net result of all these processes at the end of summer melt in August is illustrated in the adjacent figure, based on NASA satellite data. The following figure depicts the daily variation, over the past year, of the estimated surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet – which includes gains from snowfall and losses from melt runoff, but not sheet edge losses – as well as the mean daily variation for the period from 1981 to 2010. The loss of ice during the summer months of June, July and August is clearly visible, though the summer loss was smaller in 2021 than in many years. An unusual, record-setting gain can also be seen in May 2021. The next figure shows the average annual gain or loss of both the surface mass balance (in blue) and a measure of the total mass balance (in black), going all the way back to 1840. Most of the data comes from meteorological stations across Greenland. The total mass balance in this graph includes the surface mass balance, iceberg calving and submarine melting (combined in the gray dashed line), and melting from basal sources underneath the ice sheet, but not peripheral glaciers – glaciers that contribute 15 to 20% of Greenland’s total mass loss. It can be seen that the rate of ice loss excluding glaciers has increased since about 2000. But it’s also clear from the graph that high short-term loss rates have occurred more than once in the past, notably in the 1930s and the 1950s – so the current shrinking of the Greenland ice sheet is nothing remarkable. There’s no obvious correlation with global temperatures, since the planet warmed from 1910 to 1940 but cooled from 1940 to 1970. The total ice loss (not its rate) since 1972 is displayed in more detail in the final figure below. The slightly different estimates of the total mass are because some estimates include losses from peripheral glaciers and basal melting, while others don’t. Nevertheless, the insert showing mass loss from 2010 to 2020 reveals clearly that the rate of loss may have slowed down since about 2015. The 2020 loss was 152 gigatonnes (168 gigatons), much lower than the average annual losses of 258 gigatonnes (284 gigatons) and 247 gigatonnes (272 gigatons) from 2002 to 2016 and 2012 through 2016, respectively. The 2020 loss also pales in comparison with the record high losses of 458 gigatonnes (505 gigatons) in 2012 and 329 gigatonnes (363 gigatons) in 2019. The 2021 loss is on track to be similar to 2020, according to estimates at the end of the summer melt season. The Sixth Assessment Report of the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) maintains with high confidence that, between 2006 and 2018, melting of the Greenland ice sheet and peripheral glaciers was causing sea levels to rise by 0.63 mm (25 thousandths of an inch) per year. This can be compared with a rise of 0.37 mm (15 thousandths of an inch) per year from melting of Antarctic ice. However, the rate of rise from Greenland ice losses may be falling, as discussed above. If the rate of Greenland ice loss were to remain at its 2012 to 2016 average of 247 gigatonnes (272 gigatons) per year, which is an annual loss of about 0.01% of the total mass of the ice sheet, it would take another 10,000 years for all Greenland’s ice to melt. If the rate stays at the 2020 value of 152 gigatonnes (168 gigatons) per year, the ice sheet would last another 17,000 years.

The Media Is Lying About Greenland and Climate Change – It has in fact rained on Greenland before

September 13, 2021

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/09/13/the-media-is-lying-about-greenland-and-climate-change/ From RealClearEnergy By Vijay Jayaraj September 13, 2021 The mainstream media is hell-bent on instilling climate fear among the masses. This means that they can never get over their obsession with weather events in the Arctic, which is one of their favorite subjects for projecting a climate catastrophe. The Greenland Ice Sheet has been of great interest to climate alarmists. Any small change in ice sheet mass is promoted in the media as a product of man-made climate change. Last week, media outlets across the globe claimed that there has been rain for the first time at the Greenland summit. “Rain fell at the normally snowy summit of Greenland for the first time on record,” read CNN’s headlines. Others went a step further and declared it a sign of climate doomsday. “Rain On Greenland Ice Sheet, Possibly A First, Signals Climate Change Risk,” read another headline. Unfortunately, for the mainstream media, climate history nearly always comes back to haunt their claims of unprecedented events. Records reveal that this is not the first rainfall in Greenland, and certainly not the first on the Greenland summit peak, which stands at around 10,000 feet. Records Show Past Rain Events in Greenland A 1975 report prepared for National Science Foundation (NSF) by Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory documented the summer climate at Greenland ice sheet. It showed at least two rainfall events have occurred, once in 1933 at 8,840 feet and again in 1950 at a much higher altitude. The 1950 rainfall event was above 9,500 feet and very close to the Greenland summit peak, thus contradicting mainstream media claims of unprecedented rainfall at the summit. The NSF report states, “According to Hogue (1964) heavy rainfall seldom occurs above 6,000 ft on the Greenland ice sheet. However, at Watkins (75°N, 48°W, and elevation 8,840 ft) rain was reported to have occurred in July 1933. Hogue also notes that in the Centrale-Eismitte area, drizzle and rain were each reported once in a three-year period, on 20 and 21 June 1950, respectively.” The site of the previous rainfall event, Centrale-Eismitte, is close to the 9,800-feet mark where the current rainfall event occurred. It would be a pure lie — or gross ignorance — to claim that rainfall at such an altitude has never occurred before at Greenland. Headlines That Portray an Incomplete Reality Besides misleading the public on the “first-time rain event,” these media outlets have also concealed the reality of the situation in Greenland, especially in 2021. This year, Greenland’s surface mass balance (SMB) was higher than the 30-year average during many days of the year. SMB is the net balance between the accumulation and ablation on a glacier’s surface, typically denoted by mass gain and mass loss. Data on Greenland’s SMB is available at Polar Portal, where Danish research institutions display the results of their monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the sea ice in the Arctic. SMB data for 2021 show that there has been no significant melting and there was also a surprising gain in the SMB during the summer months, which is usually the melting season. During July and August, the total accumulation of SMB (as measured in gigatons) was higher than the 30-year average (1981-2010). This can be attributed to the unexpected gain in SMB during the summer months. So not only has the media lied to the public about the “never-before” rainfall event, it has also withheld the truth about the above-average SMB that was witnessed during the past 50 days. This endless parade of lies about Greenland and the Arctic will likely continue. Even above-average snow accumulations will be kept out of the news and one-time warm weather events (especially during the melt season) will be used as “proof” for global warming. Vijay Jayaraj is a Contributing Writer to the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a master of science degree in environmental science from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.

New Study: Retreating East Greenland Glaciers Uncover Plant Debris Dating To The 16th – 17th Centuries – Suggests Greenland was as-warm or warmer than today

August 27, 2021

https://notrickszone.com/2021/08/19/new-study-retreating-east-greenland-glaciers-uncover-plant-debris-dating-to-the-16th-17th-centuries/ By Kenneth Richard Exposed moss and willow shrubs buried beneath today’s receding East Greenland glaciers can be dated to 400 to 500 years ago, suggesting this period (the early Little Ice Age) was as-warm or warmer than today. It is widely accepted that Greenland’s surface temperatures were several degrees warmer (McFarlin et al., 2018, Axford et al., 2021) and ice volume and extent much smaller (Nielsen et al., 2018, Weiser et al., 2021), throughout nearly all of the last 8,000 to 10,000 years. Image Source: Weiser et al., 2021 What may not yet be widely accepted is the conclusion that the modern temperatures and ice extent still fall within the range of a Holocene “cold stage” rather than a warm stage. A new study documents a much warmer-than-today Early and Middle Holocene in East Greenland, a time when ice caps were “absent” or far less extensive than they are presently. Plant remains buried under retreating glaciers in East Greenland affirm these locations were not covered in glaciers as recently as 400 to 500 years ago. But the authors also report there were occasionally brief “cold stages” during the Holocene when Greenland’s glacier extent advanced to today’s levels. “…Renland Ice Cap briefly reach[ed] extents during cold phases that may have been similar to today.” This suggests that the modern temperatures and ice volumes fall within the range of a “cold stage” too. Image Source: Medford et al., 2021

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