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12 Percent. That’s how much of Greenland’s surface experienced melt yesterday
The Greenland Summer Melt Season Just Started in April
12
April, 2016
12
Percent. That’s how much of Greenland’s surface experienced melt
yesterday according to a report from DMI’s
Polar Portal as
an unprecedented flow of warm, wet air slammed into its great ice
sheets. 10
Percent. That’s how much of Greenland’s ice sheet surface is
required to melt in order to mark an official start to the Summer
melt season. Late May or early June. That’s when Greenland melt
season typically begins.
In
other words, a Greenland melt season that usually starts as May rolls
into June and
has never initiated before May 5th just
began on April 11th of 2016. That’s
24 days ahead of the previous record set only six years ago and more
than a month and a half ahead of the typical melt start. In
other words — way too early. But in a rapidly heating world where
monthly temperatures have now exceeded a range of 1.5 C above 1880s
levels, we could well expect Greenland melts to begin earlier, end
later, and encompass more and more of the ice sheet surface at peak
melt during July.
(Record
early start to Greenland’s ‘Summer’ melt season occurred on
April 11, 2016 according to reports from DMI’s Polar
Portal.)
Yesterday’s
new record early melt start occurred as extraordinarily warm
temperatures in the range of 20-40 degrees Fahrenheit above average
swept over southern, central and western Greenland.
This flood of extremely warm temperatures for Greenland was
accompanied by heavy rains and strong winds — gusting to gale or
even hurricane force in some locations. In some areas, rain fell over
the ice sheet itself. As recently as midday Tuesday, Dr. Jason Box —
a prominent Greenland researcher — tweeted a report from a friend
in Nuuk, near the rapidly destabilizing Jacobshavn Glacier, that the
town was “close
to drowning in water caused by rain and snow melt.”
Today,
temperatures for the whole of Greenland — a 1.7 million square
kilometer island containing enough ice to raise sea levels by more
than 20 feet should it all melt — were
measuring as high as 10.17 C above average (more
than 18 F above average) with readings over much of northern and
central Greenland spiking over 20 C (36 F) above normal (1980-2010)
ranges. So it’s likely that Monday’s record early 12 percent
surface melt will extend and possibly expand on through today (April
12).
(Extreme
warmth over much of Greenland on April 12th is continuing a new
record early start to melt season for this up to two mile high pile
of ice. Image source: Karsten’s
Climate Maps.
Data Source: NOAA/NCEP/GFS.)
Over
the coming week, temperatures across Greenland are expected to
steadily fall back toward more normal ranges. However, it’s worth
noting that much of the heat from this year’s record early melt
spike will be baked into the ice — adding a kind of internal heat
pressure as Spring gradually progresses into Summer.
During
July of 2012, an unprecedented 95 percent of Greenland’s surface
experienced melt. For 2016, unprecedented Arctic warming during
Winter appears to have set the stage for a serious challenge to both
2012 Greenland and 2012 Arctic sea ice melt records. And with
seasonal sea ice at or near new record lows even as Greenland is off
to an amazingly early melt start, it appears that 2016 is now in a
race to set a number of new benchmarks as Arctic ice continues its
ominous and disruptive longer-term decline.
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