Greenland Gained 9 Gigatons Of Snow And Ice On Sunday
Data from the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) shows that Greenland ice melt slowed significantly during the past decade, and that the trend has now swung to one of growth.
... Since 2016, a sharp uptick in the Surface Mass Balance (SMB) –a calculation used to determine the ‘health’ of a glacier– has been detected, and daily/monthly records have routinely been broken.
Decades of reliable satellite measurements have allowed trends to be detected, and while it is true that the world’s largest island lost mass from around 1995 to 2012, that trend has now reversed.
Like the gradual turning of a ship, from 2010 to 2015, Greenland’s SMB changed course and has been on an upward trajectory ever since.
... 2021 has continued that trend of growth started in ≈2012 — record-breaking gains have been posted across the Greenland ice sheet all year, including some that have literally spiked ‘off the charts’:
... The 9 Gigatons logged on Dec 5 were unprecedented for the day, and also, according to DMI data (which runs back to 1981), were among the largest daily accumulations ever seen on the ice sheet.
Note: 9Gts is enough to bury Central Park, NYC under 10,000+ feet of ice.
These impressive gains have pushed the ice sheet’s SMB above the 1981-2010 mean.
... The above data reveals the reality, yet the following headlines are how the masses are being (mis)informed:
“Greenland Ice Sheet Experiences Record Loss”, reported The Washington Post recently;
“Satellite Monitoring of Greenland Ice Melting Highlights Increasing Global Flood Risk”, read a scitechdaily.com headline from Nov, 2021.
The science, in all fields, has been hijacked by vested interests.
The Australian state of New South Wales experienced its coldest November in recorded history last month (in data doing back to the 1800s), but the entire Aussie continent also ran exceptionally cold, suffering its chilliest Nov since 1999.
According to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), the nation’s average temperature anomaly closed a whopping -1.25C below the 1991-2020 baseline;
it even finished an impressive -0.63C below the old 1961-1990 baseline (a historically cool era).
“It was a combination [of] cloud cover and and we also saw just some cool outbreaks” during November, Agata Imielska, manager for the bureau’s NSW and ACT operations, said.
With the background warming from climate change “these days are more unusual to what we generally see”, she said.
... Monthly Lows (And Rare Snows) Fall in Hawaii
... Yesterday’s high of 70F (21.1C) in Honolulu may not sound all that chilly, but the reading is now the city’s new lowest-max temperature ever recorded for the month of December.
It was also Honolulu’s lowest-high for any month of the year since the 68F (20C) set back in January, 1979:
... The summits of Maunakea and Mauna Loa are suffering historic snows, reports bigislandvideonews.com, while torrential rains and thunderstorms, “capable of producing catastrophic flooding”, are hitting the lower elevations, read the National Weather Service in Honolulu’s warning.
As I write, blizzard conditions are prevailing on Hawaiʻi island summits where additional accumulations of 8+ inches as well as winds topping 125 mph are expected in the coming hours.
“Travel should be restricted to emergencies only,” continues the NWS warning.
“Blowing snow will significantly reduce visibility at times, with periods of zero visibility,” the agency added.
Palau
Shifting 4,800 miles west of Hawaii, and to the Micronesia region of the western Pacific Ocean, Palau –an archipelago of over 500 islands– observed its coldest December temperature ever on Dec 3.
The reading of 70F (21.1C) set at the Koror International Airport was also just 1F off the island’s all-time low for any month of the year."