By Paul Homewood
Yesterday I reported on new research suggesting that the dissipation of heat from Earth’s interior is responsible for the acceleration of the seaward slide of Greenland’s ice sheets.
The story claimed that 100 MW (megawatts) per square meter of energy was transferred from the Earth’s interior to the fjord.
As eagle eyes have spotted, this should have read 100 mW (milliwatts). A milliwatt is, of course, a thousandth of a watt.
The error may have originated in the Press Release, as even the AAAS made the same mistake:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-01/au-hlf011818.php
Phys.Org has exactly the same wording:
https://phys.org/news/2018-01-loss-earth-triggers-ice-sheet.html
While we’re at it, we might as well look at the Abstract:
ABSTRACT
The Greenland ice sheet (GIS) is losing mass at an increasing rate due to surface melt and flow acceleration in outlet glaciers. Currently, there is a large disagreement between observed and simulated ice flow, which may arise from inaccurate parameterization of basal motion, subglacial hydrology or geothermal heat sources. Recently it was suggested that there may be a hidden heat source beneath GIS caused by a higher than expected geothermal heat flux (GHF) from the Earth’s interior. Here we present the first direct measurements of GHF from beneath a deep fjord basin in Northeast Greenland. Temperature and salinity time series (2005–2015) in the deep stagnant basin water are used to quantify a GHF of 93 ± 21 mW m−2 which confirm previous indirect estimated values below GIS. A compilation of heat flux recordings from Greenland show the existence of geothermal heat sources beneath GIS and could explain high glacial ice speed areas such as the Northeast Greenland ice stream.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-19244-x
The paper refers to a gradual warming of the stagnant deep basin bottom water below 240 m depth of 0.017 °C yr−1 from 2005 to 2015.
As I read it, the authors have extrapolated from that temperature change to arrive at the GHF.
What is absolutely certain though is that CO2 in the atmosphere is not capable of causing such changes.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
January 23, 2018 at 04:10PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 