thanks for sending the update.This is indeed very interesting. I looked at the data from passive microwave yesterday and saw a similar thing.
To put things in context, this is not the earliest melt onset over the past decade, according to passive microwave data. Indeed, during the 'goliath' year of 2012, melting covering more or about 10 % of thrice sheet started on or around April 5th and lasted for a few days, to begin again on May 3rd more consistently and . It will be interesting to see how things evolve.
Beast,
Marco
> On Apr 12, 2016, at 09:44, Ruth Mottram <rum@dmi.dk> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> On behalf of a number of colleagues and collaborators we would like to alert you to an unusually early melt event over the Greenland ice sheet this week.
> We calculate around 11.8% of the area of the ice sheet melted yesterday and according to our analysis (back to 1990, we will extend this back to 1980 shortly), this is a full month earlier over such a large area (more than 10% of the ice sheet) than has occurred previously.
>
> Observations from Greenland show that for example, Kangerlussuaq measured 17.8C (only 0.2C off the record temperature measured for the whole of Greenland in April) and Summit station -6.6C, a new record for April. PROMICE station KAN_U showed a daily mean temperature of 0.5C with a maximum hourly temperature of 3.05C, most of the lower PROMICE stations recorded temperatures between 5 and 10C.
>
> The culprit driving melt at this time is an interesting omega pressure pattern with a very cold north America and warm air over Greenland.
>
> We have assembled some information from AWS, radiosondes and models in the attached pdf document to explain the context of this strange start to the melt season in 2016. As usual, since 2013, daily updated surface mass balance plots, and PROMICE observations as well as GRACE total mass balance can all be viewed here (in English):
>
> http://polarportal.dk/en/groenlands-indlandsis/nbsp/isens-overflade/
>
> Data and model output is available for research purposes.
>
> On behalf of Polar Portal scientists at DMI, DTU and GEUS,
>
> Best wishes
>
> Ruth Mottram
>
>
> Dr Ruth Mottram
> Danish Meteorological Institute
> Lyngbyvej 100
> DK-2100 Copenhagen
> Denmark
> Tel.: +45 39 15 74 88
>
> <April_melt_Greenland2016_EN.pdf>_______________________________________________
> You're subscribed to the CRYOLIST mailing list
> To send a message to the list, email cryolist@cryolist.org
> For posting guidelines, see http://cryolist.org/posting.html
——————————
Lamont Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Columbia University
61 Route 9W
Palisades, NY 10964
and
NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies, Adjunct Scientist
Associate Editor, The Cryosphere
Associate Editor, Frontiers in Earth Science - Cryosphere Sciences
———————
www.cryocity.org
www.ldeo.columbia.edu
Twitter: @cryocity
Cell: + 2023754884
*** NOTE THAT THE CCNY EMAIL ACCOUNT WILL NO LONGER BE ACTIVE STARTING 2016. PLEASE USE EITHER THE GMAIL OR COLUMBIA EMAIL ADDRESSES FOR ANY COMMUNICATION ***
_______________________________________________
You're subscribed to the CRYOLIST mailing list
To send a message to the list, email cryolist@cryolist.org
For posting guidelines, see http://cryolist.org/posting.html
