date: Fri Sep 24 09:12:10 2004 from: Phil Jones subject: Re: ???? to: Tom Wigley Tom, In today, but off tomorrow to IPCC WGI. Here's the 3 figures I put together. The first is Nuuk (Godthaab), the 2cnd is a mix of stations near Jakobshavn/Upernavik and the 3rd is further south near Ivigtut. I can't cope with the Inuit names. None of these are written up yet. You can have a look for yourself. It seems to have cooled by roughly what they say, but this is only one location. Most places in Greenland do show some cooling. Most places in the Arctic show little warming in summer as temperatures are constrained to be near zero, when there is snow and ice around, Cheers Phil At 13:16 22/09/2004, you wrote: Phil, Wotcha think of the item below? I thought you were writing up something about Greenland temps? ===== MORE EVIDENCE THAT GREENLAND HAS BEEN COOLING SIGNIFICANTLY CO2 Science Magazine, 22 September 2004 [1]http://www.co2science.org/journal/v7/v7n38c1.htm Reference Taurisano, A., Boggild, C.E. and Karlsen, H.G. 2004. A century of climate variability and climate gradients from coast to ice sheet in West Greenland. Geografiska Annaler 86A: 217-224. What was done In a preliminary step required to better understand the relationship of glacier dynamics to climate change in West Greenland, the authors "describe the temperature trends of the Nuuk fjord area during the last century." What was learned Taurisano et al.'s analyses of all pertinent regional data led them to conclude that "at all stations in the Nuuk fjord, both the annual mean and the average temperature of the three summer months (June, July and August) exhibit a pattern in agreement with the trends observed at other stations in south and west Greenland (Humlum 1999; Hanna and Cappelen, 2002b)." As they describe it, the temperature data "show that a warming trend occurred in the Nuuk fjord during the first 50 years of the 1900s, followed by a cooling over the second part of the century, when the average annual temperatures decreased by approximately 1.5°C." Coincident with this cooling trend there was also what they describe as "a remarkable increase in the number of snowfall days (+59 days)." What is more, they report that "not only did the cooling affect the winter months, as suggested by Hannna and Cappelen (2002a), but also the summer mean," noting that "the summer cooling is rather important information for glaciological studies, due to the ablation-temperature relations." Last of all, they report there was no significant trend in annual precipitation. What it means In their concluding discussion, Taurisano et al. remark that the temperature data they studied "reveal a pattern which is common to most other stations in Greenland." Hence, we can be thankful that whatever the rest of the Northern Hemisphere may be doing, the part that holds the lion's share of the hemisphere's ice has been cooling for the past half-century, and at a very significant rate, making it ever more unlikely that its horde of frozen water will be released to the world's oceans to raise havoc with global sea level any time soon. In addition, because the annual number of snowfall days over much of Greenland has increased so dramatically over the same time period, it is possible that the presumably enhanced accumulation of snow on its huge ice sheet may be compensating for the melting of many of the world's mountain glaciers and keeping global sea level in check for this reason too. Last of all, Greenland's temperature trend of the past half-century has been just the opposite -- and strikingly so -- of that which is claimed for the Northern Hemisphere and the world by the IPCC and its climate-alarmist friends. Furthermore, as Greenland contributes significantly to the land area of the Arctic, it presents these folks with a double problem, as they have historically claimed that high northern latitudes should be the first to exhibit convincing evidence of CO2-induced global warming. Clearly, someone forgot to tell Greenland what it's supposed to be doing. References Hanna, E. and Cappelen, J. 2002a. Recent climate of Southern Greenland. Weather 57: 320-328. Hanna, E. and Cappelen, J. 2002b. Recent cooling in coastal southern Greenland and relation with the North Atlantic Oscillation. Geophysical Research Letters 30: 1132. Humlum O. 1999. Late-Holocene climate in central West Greenland: meteorological data and rock-glacier isotope evidence. The Holocene 9: 581-594. Copyright © 2004. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------