A new NASA study shows that a major Greenland glacier once touted as one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again.
The Jakobshavn glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles and thinning nearly 130 feet annually. But it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday’s Nature Geoscience. Study authors and outside scientists think this is temporary.“That was kind of a surprise. We kind of got used to a runaway system,” said Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland ice and climate scientist Jason Box. “The good news is that it’s a reminder that it’s not necessarily going that fast. But it is going.”
Polar bears will welcome this news, which have substantially increased in numbers over the past decade.
The reason for the expansion is being attributed to a natural climate cycle.
A natural cyclical cooling of North Atlantic waters likely caused the glacier to reverse course, said study lead author Ala Khazendar, a NASA glaciologist on the Oceans Melting Greenland project. Khazendar and colleagues say this coincides with a flip of the North Atlantic Oscillation — a natural and temporary cooling and warming of parts of the ocean that is like a distant cousin to El Nino in the Pacific.The water in Disko Bay, where Jakobshavn hits the ocean, is about 3.6 degrees cooler than a few years ago, study authors said.
The findings have led to some scientists questioning the concept of “climate change” as a cut-and-dry, black-and-white theory.
Other Arctic glaciers may be undergoing similar growth. That suggests the ebb and flow of glaciers in a warming world may be more complicated and harder to predict than previously thought, says Willis.One important factor is that it’s not just about a warming atmosphere. “The water is warming, too,” says Willis. “Oceans are doing a huge part of the work in terms of driving Greenland’s ice melt.”
Interestingly, scientists have started to use biomarker proxies used to reconstruct both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice conditions since the Early Holocene (i.e., about 11,500 years ago) reveal that today’s sea ice changes are not unusual. Additionally, they decided that there is more extensive Arctic and Antarctic sea ice during recent decades than nearly all of the last 10,000 years.
The reports related to this finding indicate the shrinkage is “temporary.” Climate change believers are hanging onto this word as vigorously as anti-Trumpers are hanging on to the phase “not exonerated” in the Mueller Report.
Meanwhile, publications began to notice the connection to climate and solar activity we have often covered.
…The back story here is that all weather is derived from the sun and that we are now heading into a potentially deep sunspot minimum, which may once again show significant lowering of global temperatures.That is the direct opposite of many who believe that climate change is raising global temperatures.You should look at various reliable sources on both sides and make up your own mind!…As of the writing of this column, the sun has not seen sunspots for 33 days in a row, only to have sunspot AR2734 appear in the northern hemisphere on Wednesday.It is a tiny one and goes to show you that we need to do a lot more research on the Sun, to understand its complex cycles.
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