It’s so hot it’s cold
Melting Greenland glacier appears to be growing again https://t.co/pBY6sqBXTQ pic.twitter.com/EP1G1atsGA
— New York Post (@nypost) March 26, 2019
From the link
A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds.
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.
Of course, there has to be naysaying
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.â€
Why is it happening?
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 (OMG) 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.
While this is “good news†on a temporary basis, this is bad news on the long term because it tells scientists that ocean temperature is a bigger player in glacier retreats and advances than previously thought, said NASA climate scientist Josh Willis, a study co-author.
Over the decades the water has been and will be warming from man-made climate change, he said, noting that about 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the oceans.
See? Growing is natural, shrinking is strictly your fault for driving a fossil fueled vehicle instead of taking the train and eating burgers instead of insects.
