Greenland is melting

newyorker.com

35 points·jseliger··9 comments

Not really, no. http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-shee...

"Is melting," not "has melted." Did you misread the headline and then accidentally skip the article?

I did skip the article considering it's New Yorker article (i.e. very long). The title is however "Greenland is melting", and the link provided by the gp shows that year to date (from 1-Sep to today), Greenland has acquired more surface ice mass than 2 standard deviations above the mean historical rate (over the last 24 years). So, no, Greenland is not melting.

From the same link:

> As mentioned, satellites measuring the ice sheet mass have observed a loss of around 200 Gt/year over the last decade.

Looking at the data for one year is not very useful. This is a long term process, as the long article you didn't read went to great pains to explain.

Fair enough. It would also be useful to know that 200 GT/year translates into 0.01% per year. Or 1% per century. It's indeed a long term process.

> year to date (from 1-Sep to today)

This year to date data skips the summer season and includes winter!

Yes, this year's melt season hasn't started yet. And yes, it has been a snowier-than-normal winter for Greenland. That doesn't negate the long term trend of melting!

Could you protect the ice with giant drone-dragon-sunsails?

(2016)

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