{"id":284642,"date":"2023-10-23T13:22:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T11:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=284642"},"modified":"2023-10-23T13:22:03","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T11:22:03","slug":"greenlands-tipping-point-cancelled-claims-of-a-runaway-melt-are-overblown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=284642","title":{"rendered":"Greenland\u2019s Tipping Point Cancelled? Claims Of A Runaway Melt Are Overblown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The hyperventilating is typical of researchers in search for more grant money. Journalists fall prey (too often wittingly) to anything they think will advance their climate change agenda. Temperature trends across the ice-free part of Greenland indicate cooling since 2001.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From NoTricksZone<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0P Gosselin<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0<\/em>22. October 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By KlimaNachrichten<\/a><\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We have carefully read the definition of a \u201ctipping point\u201d as conveyed by Potsdam Institute (PIK): \u201cIt\u2019s like a pencil that you push further and further over the edge of a table with your finger. First nothing happens \u2013 then it falls.\u201d That\u2019s what the\u00a0PIK website<\/a>\u00a0says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Spatial distribution of global and regional tipping elements. The colors indicate the temperature range in which tipping is likely. Figure designed at PIK (under CC-BY license), scientific basis is Armstrong McKay et al., Science (2022).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nothing can bring the pencil back to the table except a failure of gravity, which is not conceivable. Then PIK lists various \u201celements\u201d that are supposed to exhibit such behavior. To the ice sheet of Greenland one finds there<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are indications that the tipping point, which leads to an almost complete loss of ice in the long term (about 10,000 years), could probably be reached at a global warming of just under 1.5\u00b0C (possible from 0.8\u00b0C global warming, at the latest at 3\u00b0C).\u201c<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Now there\u2019s a paper on the subject has appeared in \u201cNature<\/a>\u201c, which paints a different picture. It finds that even after a possibly \u201ccritical warming threshold\u201d has been crossed, \u201cthe pencil does not fall down:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We find several stable intermediate ice-sheet configurations \u2026 that return to the present-day state if the climate returns to present-day conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

in addition, models often determine the warming in Greenland (the root of the evil) using the mean global warming rate and then apply an \u201cArctic amplification\u201d factor to each warming to determine the temperature swing in Greenland. The paper states:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Recently, it has been shown that the Arctic warms four times faster than the global average and thus substantially exceeds previous estimates and projections from climate models. Arctic amplification of this magnitude would reduce the safe space for the GrIS substantially. However, surface temperatures around Greenland might not increase that severely in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Observations since 2000 now show that during this period the warming of the Arctic is far from uniform:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The warming trends (in \u00b0C \/ year) since 2000 of the Arctic region. The figure was generated with the\u00a0KNMI Climate Explorer<\/a>. The \u201cArctic amplification\u201d in the Arctic strikes in large parts of its European part, but in Greenland, of all places, the observed trends are much lower, especially in the area in the south and center of the island, which is particularly vulnerable to \u201cthawing\u201d.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A constant factor, therefore, according to observations, is a further overestimation of the danger of the occurrence of \u201cgalloping ice melt\u201d in Greenland. The \u201cLast Generation \u2013 before the tipping points\u201d has perhaps been misled not only with the characteristics of tipping points (the \u201cfalling pencil\u201d) , but also with the real dangers of the tipping elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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