From the Sacramento Bee: In a scant four days this month, the surface of Greenland's ice sheet melted to an extent not witnessed in 30 years of satellite observations, NASA reported Tuesday.
On average, about half of the surface of the ice sheet melts during the summer. But from July 8 to July 12, the ice melt expanded from 40 percent of the ice sheet
to 97 percent, according to scientists who analyzed the data from
satellites deployed by NASA and India's space research institute.
''I started looking at the satellite imagery
and saw something that was really unprecedented" since the advent of
satellite imaging of the earth's frozen surface, or cryosphere, said
Thomas L. Mote, a climate scientist at the University of Georgia who for 20 years has been studying ice changes on Greenland detected by satellite.
While scientists described it as an "extreme event" not previously
recorded from space, they hastened to add that it was normal in a
broader historical context.
Ice core samples taken from the summit of Greenland's ice sheet
that shed light on 10,000 years of its history show that a similar
large-scale melting event has happened roughly every 150 years, said
Lora Koenig, a glaciologist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who
has also studied the satellite imagery. Because the previous vast melt
occurred in 1889, this year's is more or less on schedule, she said.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/07/25/4657166/dramatic-ice-melt-in-greenland.html
In the next few days, global warming/climate change/Kool Aid drinkers will be spouting that the ice in Greenland is melting and it is because of global warming/climate change. They will forget to mention the part about that this is a normal occurring process.
But you will know.
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