Danish Climate Body Wrongly Reported Greenland’s Heat Record
Denmark’s national climate body has admitted it wrongly reported record warm temperatures on the center of the Greenland ice sheet last week, in what it called “good news from a climate perspective”.
The Danish Meteorological Institute, which has a key role in monitoring Greenland’s climate, last week reported a shocking August temperature of between 2.7C and 4.7C at the Summit weather station, which is located 3,202m above sea level at the center of the Greenland ice sheet, generating a spate of global headlines.
But on Wednesday it posted a tweet saying that a closer look had shown that monitoring equipment had been giving erroneous results.
“Was there record-level warmth on the inland ice on Friday?” it said. “No! A quality check has confirmed our suspicion that the measurement was too high.”
By combining measurements with observations from other weather stations, the DMI has now estimated that the temperature was closer to -2C.
“You could say that this is good news from a climate perspective,” Herdis Damberg, one of the Institute’s meteorologists told Danish state broadcaster DR. “There are probably a lot of people wiping their foreheads saying that it’s pretty good that it wasn’t four degrees.”
The institute believes that snow had caused poor ventilation around the thermometers at the site, wrongly boosting the temperature.
The record temperature ever recorded at Summit is 2.2C, which was reached in both 2012 and 2017. But -2C is still unusual at the station.
“It’s not a record, but -2C is still warm,” Damberg said. “It was the heat that lay around Europe that moved up to Iceland and on to Greenland.”
Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist at the institute, told The Local that the revised temperature figure did not affect the institute’s estimate that the ice cap lost a record 12.5bn tons of ice in just 24 hours last week, which triggered headlines across the world.
“This does not alter our ice melt figures at all,” she said in an email to The Local, pointing out that while the temperature measurement was taken at about 2m above the ice, her group was “largely interested in the surface temperature”.
The ice melt estimates also did not use the temperature measurements at all, she explained, but was instead based on a “surface energy balance model”, which takes into account “all of the sources of incoming and outgoing energy.”
Read more at The Local
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AlanB
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The significant thing here is the reading of a loss of 12.5 billion tons of loss from the ice cap within a 24 hour still stands. Climate action supporters who are relying on genuine science are not obsessing over temperature, but are more concerned with corrosive effects of industrial age GHGs on ice.
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Matt Holl
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One significant thing here is that at perihelion (Jan 3) the planet earth is approximately 5 million Kilometers closer to the sun than at aphelion (July 4th) according to Dr Dan Britt-orbits and ice ages.
Perihelion during Southern summer would have an effect on Southern ocean temperatures and coastal land masses contiguous to oceanic currents emanating from Southern oceans.
The Southern Summer and Northern summer are estimated to have a 6 watt per sq. m. energy differential. Something to ponder.
Regards
Matt
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Matt
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That should read Perihelion and aphelion are estimated to have a 6 watt per sq. m. energy differential. Something to ponder.
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Julian Fell
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12.5 billion tonnes of ice sounds like a lot and is fuel for alarmists to frighten the public. One billion cubic meters is one cubic kilometer. The Greenland Ice cap contains 6 million cubic Kms of ice. At 12.5 per day it would take 48,000 days (131 years) to loose all the ice assuming no replacement at all. (Adding this amount of water to the oceans would raise ocean levels by 18 meters.) The 12.5 billion number is meaningless without a measure of concurrent accretion. It is the net loss that is important, if indeed there is a net loss at all. Also there is no scientific proof as to the role, if any at all, that CO2 may have in these events. Given that the medieval warm period was warmer than now and lasted 300 years and the Greenland Ice cap did not melt and the oceans did not rise I am not worrying about this 12.5 billion loss per day.
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Matt
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Hi Julian
Thank you for your comment. Informative and on point
My comment on the Milankovich cycle highlights the fact I have never encountered information on differing stages of the cycles and possible, probable climatic effects thereof.
Ten thousand year increments would be great for the three cycles and then have an overlay of the solar cycles over that. Lessen the chaos. Inform the masses.
Regards
Matt
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Julian Fell
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Hi Matt,
The greater solar irradiation that comes at perihelion is countered by the faster speed of the orbit. The southern summer is 4 days shorter than the northern one. The two effects counter balance each other so there is little actual difference. Also the near polar oceans acquire heat very slowly. This applies to the current situation where the current Terran orbit is very close to circular. When the orbit becomes more oval the slower aphelion leads to greater heat loss due to both distance and slower orbit speed. The perihelion warming is greater but of relatively shorter duration and the stefan-boltzmann accelerated irradiation (emission being proportional to T^4) reduces the impact of higher levels of irradiation. Over all the effect of a more oval orbit is a cooling.
We have the situation at the moment where the mid-summer/winter solstices due to the tilt of the spin axis closely match the aphelion/perihelion times, which would maximize the insolation in southern summer and minimize the insolation in northern summer. If the aphelion and perihelion were coincident with the equinoxes this effect would be minimized.
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Matt Holl
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Hi Julian Fell
I am humbled by your reply. I will read it a number of times and roll it around my tongue. (savour the essence)
When I referred to Southern Ocean I really meant from equator to southern limits of the atmospheric Hadley Cell. (30 degrees south) I need to evolve my communication to more exacting.
I appreciate your comments on perihelion and aphelion currently having “cancelling each other out” energy budgets but because of the oceans retention of heat I still wonder if perihelion’s higher maximum solar energy would have a “south of the border” subtle increase in oceanic. temperature.
I am not a scientist but will ponder and be open to more info on climate.
Thank you again Julian.
King Regards
Matt
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