Greenland Melt Began Weeks Early This Year; Heat Dome Parked Over Island Driving 10-15C Anomaly

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Greenland’s Snow and Ice started melting in early April this year, weeks earlier than normal. Unprecedented early surface melting is well underway on the southeastern coastline now.

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Greenland’s ice cap, which hangs above the northern hemisphere like Damocles’ sword, started melting early this April, weeks earlier than the previous record date, and now another even stronger melt event is underway. Storms in the middle north Atlantic have driven up heat domes over Scandinavia and Greenland by winds that pull heat out of the warm ocean, warming the air above it.

The previous extreme years for Greenland melting, 2010 and 2012 began early and were associated with similar domes of warm air that extended from the surface to tens of thousands of feet (greater than 5000 meters) above Greenland. It’s a weather feature called blocking and Greenland is one of the places in the world where blocking can be persistent. There’s a strong chance that this spring’s April blocking and warmth will continue through the summer months.

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The melting of Greenland’s many glaciers threaten to inundate global coastlines in coming decades, but the U.S. east coast is already vulnerable to the immediate impacts of intense melt seasons because fresh water decreases the overturning of warm salty Atlantic ocean water in the subpolar seas. Recent research has confirmed that the Gulf Stream slowed down following the intense Greenland melt seasons of 2010 and 2012. That slow down caused sea level to jump up along the east coast from Florida to Cape Cod because a weaker gulf stream allows the high sea surface heights on the seaward side of the Gulf Stream to push ashore. Flooding of the U.S. Navy’s largest facility, Naval station Norfolk is particularly concerning. A report just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that Greenland started losing mass (by the combination of surface melting plus melting of glacial ice by seawater) around 1980 with a rapid acceleration in melting over the past decade.

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/29/1853872/-Heat-Dome-over-Greenland-Causing-Unprecedented-Early-Melting