https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/09/13/the-media-is-lying-about-greenland-and-climate-change/
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.