New Study Finds Greenland Ice Melt 'not changing' or 'dropping'
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New Study Finds Greenland Ice Melt 'not changing' or 'dropping' – NYT 3 Jul 08 - Excerpt: One of the most vivid symbols of global warming used by scientists and campaigners to spur society to curb climate-warming emissions is photography of gushing rivers of meltwater plunging from the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet into the depths. Recent studies have shown these natural drainpipes, called moulins, can speed up the slow seaward march of the grinding ice by lubricating the interface with bedrock below. The faster that ice flows, the faster seas rise. Now, though, A new Dutch study of 17 years of satellite measurements of ice movement in western Greenland concludes that the speedup of the ice is a transient summertime phenomenon, with the overall yearly movement of the grinding glaciers not changing, and actually dropping slightly in some places, when measured over longer time spans. The work, the authors and other experts caution, does not mean that more widespread surface melting could not eventually destabilize vast areas of the world’s second-largest ice storehouse. But for the moment, the study, which is being published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, throws into question the notion that abrupt ice losses in Greenland are nigh. “The positive-feedback mechanism between melt rate and ice velocity appears to be a seasonal process that may have only a limited effect on the response of the ice sheet to climate warming over the next decades,” said the paper. The study was led by Roderik S.W. van de Wal of the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research of the University of Utrecht.
16 Nov 08 – "A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. “On Monday, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space
Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr
James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring
global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October
on record. “The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running. “The error was so glaring … [that] GISS began
hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse
because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS
claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month
when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast
from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more
extensive than at the same time last year.
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