By Paul Homewood
The Telegraph is head to head with the Mirror in the race for worst climate story of the week:
Billions of tonnes of ice in Greenland is melting 50 years ahead of climate change schedules, preventing inhabitants from moving around the country by sledge and leading to the surreal spectacle of children playing in the Arctic sea due to rising temperatures.
A heatwave gripping the Arctic region is causing unprecedented levels of melting ice, and has also seen global sea levels rise, in a clear sign that climate change is taking its severe toll much more quickly than predicted.
The rest of the article is just a rehash of yesterday’s Mirror fairy tales.
But where on earth does the DT get this nonsense about ice melt?
To recap, the Greenland ice cap typically loses about 200 billion tonnes of ice every summer, which is replaced by over 500 billion tonnes from snow falling in winter.
This gain in surface mass balance is countered by calving of glaciers.
This year the summer melt has been slightly higher than normal, but way less than in 2012. Moreover the last two summers have seen ice mass gains well above average.
http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/
The Telegraph’s figure of 12.5bn tonnes is small change against the overall changes, and relates to one day, August 1st, as they state:
The glacier-covered island is experiencing record-breaking temperatures which rose to 22C on August 1, 15C above the average rate. On that same day, the severe heat caused Greenland to lose 12.5 billion tons of ice, a staggeringly large amount even by Arctic standards.
Martin Stendel, a Danish climate expert, has warned that the overall amount of ice that melted on July 31 and August 1 was enough to cover all of Florida with nearly five inches of water. Extreme cases of ice melting typically occur once every 250 years, however the enormous loss of ice on August 1 was the second since 2012, in a sign that the climate crisis is rapidly worsening.
Of course, 12bn tonnes is not “a staggering amount”, and daily peaks like this are quite common. And similar amounts are frequently added in winter.
As for this supposed “climate expert”, quite what relevance the Florida comparison has, I am not sure. Last time I checked, melting ice did not congregate over only one state.
As “once every 250 years”, perhaps he would like to tell us who was measuring the ice cap in 1769.
Given that the Greenland ice cap contains an estimated 2,600,000,000,000,000 tonnes of ice, that’s 2,600,000 billion, I don’t think we need to worry too much about the odd 12 billion!
BTW –Unfortunately the DT does not have comments on this story. I wonder why!
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
August 29, 2019 at 12:30PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
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