MOTR wrote on Jul 26^th, 2012 at 6:26am:

Thats not from the data fudgers is it. The ones that cool the past and warm the future? Is this the homogenised data (the data peer-reviewed to have issues of bad bias)?

Doctor Jolly wrote on Jul 26^th, 2012 at 9:04am:

Nothing wrong with that as it is a 150yr event but I have seen the word 'unprecedented' used which is just propaganda, scaremongering.

Doctor Jolly wrote on Jul 26^th, 2012 at 11:02am:

I would still like to see how the melt was possible with outside temps below zero, unless someone has the temp data I havent seen for this top layer melt.

I have a theory what is going on but will not share. Suffice to say, keep satellite images of the melt, raw temp data, webcam images of the ground and compare to the next melt which will probably happen with 1 - 2 years (the actual 150yr melt).

Doctor Jolly wrote on Jul 26^th, 2012 at 11:52am:

No I will not share because I am too uncertain at this stage, but the best thing to do for now is to keep an eye on the items I suggested.

progressiveslol wrote on Jul 26^th, 2012 at 11:06am:


So you're expecting another one in a few years time. Will that be the next 150yr melt arriving early?

It would seem, again, the only place to get some real climate science information is WUWT

UPDATE: Andrew Revkin at NYT’s Dot Earth got a response from NASA and agrees this is a mess,  writing in “Unprecedented’ Greenland Surface Melt – Every 150 Years?”
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/unprecedented-greenland-surface-mel...

The flow of news releases and background science content from NASA is generally excellent, but the space agency badly blew it earlier this week with this headline, which has now reverberated around the Web: “Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt.”

He adds this note from NASA, also citing Keegan et al. (2011):


Updated | Lora Koenig of NASA just sent this note providing the reference underlying her comment about past summer melting episodes at the summit (the spot on the giant ice sheet least vulnerable to melting):

The study I am citing is Alley and Anandakrishnan, 1995, “Variations in melt-layer frequency in the GISP2 ice core: implications for Holocene summer temperatures in central Greenland” published in the Annals of Glaciology for establishing the long-term frequency of melt events at Summit , Greenland. And Clausen et al., 1988 Glaciological Investigations in the Crete area, Central Greenland: A search for a new deep-drilling site also published in Annals of Glaciology for an early reference to the 1889 melt event though as mentioned in the press release Kaitlin Keegan and her advisor Mary Albert at Dartmouth University have more recent research on this event and please contact them for additional specific information.

My comment shows that melt events have occurred at Summit in the past and I have quoted the longest-term average frequency of ~150 years (exactly 153 from the paper) over the past 10,000. Since this is an ice core record that frequency is for the location of Summit only. The frequency ranges from ~80 to 250 years over different sections of the GISP2 ice core, please see the paper for specifics.

UPDATE2: I loved Revkin’s skewering of Joe Romm on his Tumblr blog. Revkin writes:

Joe Romm in full thought-police mode, labeling NASA glaciologist’s statement of scientific fact and uncertainty on Greenland surface melt episode “scientific reticence.” This even though Romm excerpts a line explaining that such events are etched in Greenland’s ice-core record roughly every 150 years:


“Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time,” says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data. “But if we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome.”

That statement is a classic example of what James Hansen called “scientific reticence.”

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/25/paging-aps-seth-borenstein-hey-seth-wheres...

MOTR wrote on Jul 26^th, 2012 at 11:52pm:

So you think 150 year event is rare. How far back and how many times should it happen to become not rare in your book?

NASA is a failed institution. The NASA astronauts and scientists were right asking for NASA to stick with the science and not become a political failure like IPCC.

MOTR wrote on Jul 27^th, 2012 at 12:32am:

Well I dont expect you scaremongers to stop using the words rare, unprecedented for something that is as regular as you having to go potty.