Rain Falls On Greenland For First Time In Recorded History

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This may well be gone in our lifetime. Attribution: Science Source/NASA

by Michael John Scott

Greenland…you remember Greenland.  Donald Trump tried to buy it, because, well, he’s an idiot.  Naturally, the people of this once frozen land soundly rejected his offer and rightly called him, as did millions of others, an…idiot.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump isn’t Greenland’s only enemy; climate change is, as temperatures in Greenland have risen so high thanks to “blocking” events that trap warm air in the higher latitudes that rain is falling for the first time in recorded history. Scientists on the ground are completely unprepared to measure the rainfall because they literally don’t have the equipment to do so, although I think a large measuring cup would do in a pinch.

Per The Guardian:

Rain has fallen on the summit of Greenland’s huge ice cap for the first time on record. Temperatures are normally well below freezing on the 3,216-metre (10,551ft) peak, and the precipitation is a stark sign of the climate crisis.

Scientists at the US National Science Foundation’s summit station saw rain falling throughout 14 August but had no gauges to measure the fall because the precipitation was so unexpected. Across Greenland, an estimated 7bn tonnes of water was released from the clouds.

The rain fell during an exceptionally hot three days in Greenland when temperatures were 18C higher than average in places. As a result, melting was seen in most of Greenland, across an area about four times the size of the UK.

Eighteen degrees Celsius is much higher than average. That’s actually 32.2 degrees Fahrenheit if my math holds true. Scientists are now saying the Greenland ice sheet is on the brink of a major tipping point.

The new analysis detected the warning signals of a tipping point in a 140-year record of ice-sheet height and melting rates in the Jakobshavn basin, one of the five biggest basins in Greenland and the fastest-melting. The prime suspect for a surge in melting is a vicious circle in which melting reduces the height of the ice sheet, exposing it to the warmer air found at lower altitudes, which causes further melting.

Unicef has also just released a new report that states at least half of the 2.2 billion children in the world are facing “extreme risks” of climate impacts.

Almost half the world’s 2.2 billion children are already at “extremely high risk” from the impacts of the climate crisis and pollution, according to a report from Unicef. The UN agency’s head called the situation “unimaginably dire”.

Nearly every child around the world was at risk from at least one of these impacts today, including heatwaves, floods, cyclones, disease, drought, and air pollution, the report said. But 1 billion children live in 33 countries facing three or four impacts simultaneously. The countries include India, Nigeria and the Philippines, and much of sub-Saharan Africa.

The picture looks dire indeed for human civilization on Planet Earth and still, nothing substantial has been done about it. We’re still addicted to fossil fuels, CO2 output has increased over the years, and all scientists can do is keep issuing warnings that are largely ignored by our governments.

We are well and truly boned.

About Post Author

Professor Mike

Professor Mike is a left-leaning, dog loving, political junkie. He has written dozens of articles for Substack, Medium, Simily, and Tribel. Professor Mike has been published at Smerconish.com, among others. He is a strong proponent of the environment, and a passionate protector of animals. In addition he is a fierce anti-Trumper. Take a moment and share his work.
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Bill Formby
2 years ago

There is little need for me to put this out there, other than the fact that I want to do so. I recently watched a special on Netflix which was made recently. It seems a lot of CO2 is being released from the soil because farmers and agri-business continue the age-old method of turning the soil over after a harvest which causes the soil to release badly needed CO2 into the atmosphere. Thus, depriving the soil of necessary ingredients to make the soil rich for planting. This is the same thing that led to the “Great Dust Bowl” in the early 20th century. According to new findings simply harvesting crops and leave the land to rest every other year. which keeps a tremendous amount of CO2 in the soil to foster the development of nitrogen and other components needed for the next planting season. Additionally, ranchers, cattle and sheep, are allowing the grassland in pastures to be stripped of soil retaining grasses instead of rotating the grazing of their animals.
Add to that, the clear-cutting of forests and the Amazon jungles are decreasing oxygen in our atmosphere. On top of that the increasing amount of methane by continuing growth in meat-producing animals humans are slowing making earth incapable of sustaining life.
Thank goodness I won’t be around to watch this occur.

james j brefeld
2 years ago

There is no stopping it now. The feedbacks re just beginning it’s only going to get worse.

2 years ago

[…] says climate change has increased so much that something historically strange is happening in Greenland. […]

Glenn R Geist
2 years ago

as for human civilization, the danger is more than hot air. Of course we do know of large changes in Greenland, but neither the Vikings nor the Inuit had rain gauges. Human history is short. The Vikings couldn’t cope with the falling temperatures otherwise we might be speaking Icelandic. Global warming in prehistoric times allowed Asians to settle here. The real question is whether or not temps will regress to the prehistoric mean. Was there some rain in the Arctic before the Younger-Dryas period reversed the global warming that began about 20,000 years BP? Could be, but that cooling period beginning about 13,ooo years ago may have been caused by a comet impact and we have no control over that and have no control over future impacts. Such things seem to have had a large effect and are unpredictable.

I’m just rambling on because in the long run we don’t know what’s going to happen but as always it will be unpredictable. Will Thule be the next financial capital or will Disko Bay the next Riviera?

Anyway, I think humans will survive on a planet that can’t support all those billions, but it will absolutely not be the the planet we fool ourselves into think is “normal.” The Earth has been red hot and ice cold. Nothing is permanent.

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