http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/greenland_recordhigh.html 

1) “…In fact, the amount of snow that has melted this year [2007] over Greenland could cover the surface size of the U.S. more than twice…”  [Repeat; in FACT….cover the U.S. more than twice]

2)  “…Marco Tedesco, a research scientist at the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, cooperatively managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, used satellite data to…” 

3)“…His [Tedesco’s] expertise in documenting melting trends produced other recent studies on increased snow melting over Greenland and the Antarctic…”

In the NASA link above, (Last Updated: November 30, 2007, Editor: Jason Townsend, NASA Official: Brian Dunbar), there is a truly ASTONISHING graph showing the Greenland Ice Sheet melting not in terms of millions of square kilometres, or giga-tonnes, or such familiar SCIENTIFIC units, but in the much more emotive units of “maps of the USA”!   (mainland).  For 2007 the melt index is given as about 2.3 USA’s, whereas for 1998 and 2002 it is about 3 (three) USA’s, and in 2005 about 2.9 USA’s   (And BTW, in other references, in 1987, twenty years ago, it was on a close par with the recent alarming record melt of 2002) 

However, Greenland is actually a lot smaller than the USA, so this dramatization is at best mistaken.  (The CIA Worldfact Book gives it at ~3 times the size of Texas) According to the data out there, the Greenland melting has reduced since 2002, which was typical of 1987, yet the hype is that recent melting is ever accelerating and scary.

The alarmist talk out there also fails to mention that instrumental records show that Greenland was warmer back in the early 1900’s.   (And, BTW, 1934 was the hottest year in the USA, not 1998, etc)

Why are we being misled?

Link 1:  http://cires.colorado.edu/science/groups/steffen/greenland/melt2005/

More recently there has been a flurry of activity in the media, spurred on by a comment or two from James Hansen, (GISS), alleging recent alarming increase in the rate of melting, but most of it being in vague terms, with some saying double the rate and some triple, relative to something not elucidated.

One of the sources of this seems to be the following November 2007 release from NASA:

Link 2: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/greenland_recordhigh.html

Here is the Intro’ for that release:    “A new NASA-supported study reports that 2007 marked an overall rise in the melting trend over the entire [sic] Greenland ice sheet and, remarkably, melting in high-altitude areas was greater than ever at 150 percent more than average…”

This seems a very strange way of putting it….for instance in 2002; a declared record high; it was simply stated as the highest since 1991 ….simple! (Later, and similarly, 2005 became legend as higher than 2002, but the data says no!)

“Tragically” though, 2007 was a notably LOWER melt, than in seven major previous years over two prior decades, depending on source thus: {1987}, {1991}, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2004 and 2005; {for 1987 & 1991, see link1 graph}; for the other years, see link 2 graph.

In other words, the 2007 “alarming” recent melting, although more than that in 2006, was actually typical of 1987, twenty years ago!

Of course, the “disappointing” number for 2007 does not make exciting news, so rather than say it was a flop, they found that it was better to say it was higher than the average from 1988 to 2006.

(Why average from1988!? Uh? Maybe because there was a statistical “benefit” in choosing 1998 - 2006, i.e. 1987 was avoided as a high melt year and 2006 was a low melt year?…. very convenient!)

They also failed to mention that there was a well instrumented warmer period in Greenland, especially 1920-1930, that should be compared with today, concerning melt potential. However melt data in those warmer times is not available; find more at:

http://bobfj.greenoptions.com/

Funny business this; why don’t they talk straight to us mortals!

For instance, the respected journal; Geophysical Research Letters, 13 June 2006, has published this  paper by Chylek et al: 

ABSTRACT:
We provide an analysis of Greenland temperature records to compare the current (1995-2005) warming period with the previous (1920-1930)
Greenland warming. We find that the current Greenland warming is not unprecedented in recent Greenland history. Temperature increases in the two warming periods are of a similar magnitude, however, the rate of warming in 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995 - 2005.

For more information:  http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Chylek/greenland_warming.html 

A 2002 paper by a lead author in the 2007 IPCC report on this topic; J BOX and colleagues studied a longer time series of Greenland temperatures and also show the same 1920’s -1930’s highs.    http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/jbox/BOX_2002_Greenland_Temperature_Analysis.pdf 

Polyakov and Johnson 2000, discusses relevant  natural climatic cycles, including primarily the Arctic Oscillation (AO) which is apparently described by others as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO = basically that of regional natural atmospheric pressure cycles) http://denali.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu:8080/~igor/research/pdf/50yr_web.pdf

It is interesting that figure 1 in that paper showing the NAO cycle record, has an impressive correlation with theGreenland temperatures.

It should be noted that most of the temperatures evaluated in
Greenland were necessarily on the coastal fringes away from the prime ice sheet. However, Johannessen et al 2006, in the only comprehensive study (45 million of data) of the prime Greenland ice sheet show that the ice sheet is growing significantly.  They also identify the NAO as a key factor, and higher air temperatures resulting in increased snow precipitation.  (Others argue, based on modelling, that coastal melting exceeds this growth, but in reality, such modelling is immensely complicated, and arguably controversial)   http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/1115356 

Finally, here is a brief extract from a recent release by NASA’s JPL:  

“Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. “Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.” 

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html 

Is anyone interested in discussing some GOOD NEWS? 

"Research Finds That Earth’s Climate is Approaching ‘Dangerous’ Point."

It is certainly scary stuff, to learn that the West Antarctic ice sheet is vanishing so quickly!   However, a rational person might dare to enquire what is happening in East Antarctica, which is not at all mentioned by Hansen.  Such checking reveals that he appears to be selecting the data he likes best, to make things seem much worse than they actually are.  For instance, not only is there a great deal more land-based ice in “the absent” East Antarctica, but it appears to be growing from snowfall at about double the RATE of the localized thinning that Hansen seizes upon.  The European Space Agency provides a fuller picture, and here is a partial quote:

The team used data from the European Space Agency’s radar satellites ERS-1 and ERS-2, which measured changes in altitude over about 70% of Antarctica’s interior - more than 8.5 million square kilometres, roughly the same size as the United States.East Antarctica thickened at an average rate of about 1.8 centimetres per year over the time period studied, the researchers discovered. The region comprises about 75% of Antarctica’s total land area - but as its ice is thicker, it carries about 85% of the total ice volume. "It is the only large terrestrial ice body that is gaining mass rather than losing it," says Davis.In contrast, smaller West Antarctica showed an overall thinning of 0.9 centimetres per year. "It’s amazing that they can measure such small changes," says Vaughan.

Does anyone think that it is OK for Hansen to deceptively give us all "the terrors" like that?   Is he not referred to as one of the leading climate SCIENTISTS in the world?