Ten year cooling period is "natural"

[DarrinS]

AGW proponents claim that the cooling observed over the last decade is part of the natural variability of climate.


So, am I to understand that cooling is natural and only warming is man-made?


Interesting.


http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/74019.html


:nope





WASHINGTON — Has Earth's fever broken?

Official government measurements show that the world's temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998.

That's given global warming skeptics new ammunition to attack the prevailing theory of climate change. The skeptics argue that the current stretch of slightly cooler temperatures means that costly measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions are ill-founded and unnecessary.

Proposals to combat global warming are "crazy" and will "destroy more than a million good American jobs and increase the average family's annual energy bill by at least $1,500 a year," the Heartland Institute, a conservative research organization based in Chicago, declared in full-page newspaper ads earlier this summer. "High levels of carbon dioxide actually benefit wildlife and human health," the ads asserted.

Many scientists agree, however, that hotter times are ahead. A decade of level or slightly lower temperatures is only a temporary dip to be expected as a result of natural, short-term variations in the enormously complex climate system, they say.

"The preponderance of evidence is that global warming will resume," Nicholas Bond, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, said in an e-mail.

"Natural variability can account for the slowing of the global mean temperature rise we have seen," said Jeff Knight, a climate expert at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter, England.

According to data from the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala., the global high temperature in 1998 was 0.76 degrees Celsius (1.37 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average for the previous 20 years.

So far this year, the high has been 0.42 degrees Celsius (0.76 degrees Fahrenheit), above the 20-year average, clearly cooler than before.

However, scientists say the skeptics' argument is misleading.

"It's entirely possible to have a period as long as a decade or two of cooling superimposed on the long-term warming trend," said David Easterling, chief of scientific services at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

"These short term fluctuations are statistically insignificant (and) entirely due to natural internal variability," Easterling said in an essay published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in April. "It's easy to 'cherry pick' a period to reinforce a point of view."

Climate experts say the 1998 record was partly caused by El Nino, a periodic warming of tropical Pacific Ocean waters that affects the climate worldwide.

"The temperature peak in 1998 to a large extent can be attributed to the very strong El Nino event of 1997-98," Bond said. "Temperatures for the globe as a whole tend to be higher during El Nino, and particularly events as intense as that one."

El Nino is returning this summer after a four-year absence and is expected to hang around until late next year.

"If El Nino continues to strengthen as projected, expect more (high temperature) records to fall," said Thomas Karl, who's the director of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville.

"At least half of the years after 2009 will be warmer than 1998, the warmest year currently on record," predicted Jeff Knight, a climate variability expert at the Hadley Centre in England.

John Christy, the director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who often sides with the skeptics, agreed that the recent cooling won't last.

"The atmosphere is just now feeling the bump in tropical Pacific temperatures related to El Nino," Christy said in an e-mail. As a result, July experienced "the largest one-month jump in our 31-year record of global satellite temperatures. We should see a warmer 2009-2010 due to El Nino."

Christy added, however: "Our ignorance of the climate system is still enormous, and our policy makers need to know that . . . We really don't know much about what causes multi-year changes like this."

In addition to newspaper ads, the Heartland Institute sponsors conferences, books, papers, videos and Web sites arguing its case against the global warming threat.

The skeptics include scientists such as Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who thinks that climate science is too uncertain to justify drastic measures to control CO2. He calls the case for action against global warming "silly" and "grotesque."

Others go further. For example, Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, thinks the world is in a 30-year cooling phase.

"The most recent global warming that began in 1977 is over, and the Earth has entered a new phase of global cooling," Easterbrook said in a talk to the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting in San Francisco in December.

Government scientists strongly disagree. "Claims that global warming is not occurring . . . ignore this natural variability and are misleading," said NOAA's Easterling.

In reality, global warming "never ceased," said Karl, the climate data center director.

[Wild Cobra]

AGW proponents claim that the cooling observed over the last decade is part of the natural variability of climate.


So, am I to understand that cooling is natural and only warming is man-made?


Interesting.
No shit. Are they really so stupid as to think the warming isn't natural, but the cooling is?

Sad thing is, libtards believe them.

[angrydude]

what happens if during this 20 years natural period of cooling we lose the 1 degree of manmade warming that occurred over 100 years.

the end of the world?

[NFGIII]

what happens if during this 20 years natural period of cooling we lose the 1 degree of manmade warming that occurred over 100 years.

the end of the world?

Nah. I'd be concerned if the temperature moves 6 -10 degrees or more in either direction.

Negative - new ice age - land mass shrinks significantly and with lower temps the growing seasons are shortened. This causes the agricultural areas to shrink thereby producing less food and resulting in massive starvation and war based on the acquisition of viable food sources. Africa is toast since they can't feed themselves currently and with a shrinking food supply I sincerely doubt many food producing nations will continue to export the quantities that are now being sent. But so is Canada and parts of northern Europe, too. Not a good situation.

Positive - Current agricultural ares will no longer be viable to the extent that they are now. Drought becomes common and most likely there will be wars based on the acquisition of viable food sources. Also living on the coast wont be a good place to be. If Greenland were to melt then that would raise the sea level by 20 ft. If Anartica were to completely melt then that would add another 250 ft. Say goodbye to all coastal cities and George Strait's song about ocean front property in Arizona may actually happen.

We exist within a very narrow temperature ban. Going too far either way will most likely scrap 80% or more of us and then we get to start all over again.
75,000 years ago Toba erupted and wiped out almost all life on this planet.(Toba Supervolcano (http://www.2012finalfantasy.com/2008/toba-supervolcano.php))
http://www.2012finalfantasy.com/2008/toba-supervolcano.php
Said to be 3000 times stronger than Mt St Helens that sunlight couldn't penetrate to the earth's surface for almost a decade.

Going either way is a lose-lose situation for us. 1 degree would only take us back to the 1850's give or take. Colder but we can get be.

[Wild Cobra]

Nah. I'd be concerned if the temperature moves 6 -10 degrees or more in either direction.
Celsius or Fahrenheit? Forf the last 11,000 years or so, we have stated withing a ~4 degree Celsius range, or about a ~7 degree Fahrenheit range.

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x262/Wild_Cobra/Global%20Warming/BondEvents.jpg

If Anartica were to completely melt then that would add another 250 ft. Say goodbye to all coastal cities and George Strait's song about ocean front property in Arizona may actually happen.

Interesting propaganda.

Think about this. How cold is the Antarctic? If the global temperature raised enough to melt any significant amount of ice on the continent, then it is already too hot to sustain life as we know it on the rest of the planet!

It's one think for ice shelves and the arctic ice to melt, but continental ice...


Going either way is a lose-lose situation for us. 1 degree would only take us back to the 1850's give or take. Colder but we can get be.
Agreed. Natural variations over the last 11,000 say we can go back almost 3 C and it would not be abnormal for natural variations.

[NFGIII]

Celsius or Fahrenheit? Forf the last 11,000 years or so, we have stated withing a ~4 degree Celsius range, or about a ~7 degree Fahrenheit range.

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x262/Wild_Cobra/Global%20Warming/BondEvents.jpg

Interesting propaganda.

Think about this. How cold is the Antarctic? If the global temperature raised enough to melt any significant amount of ice on the continent, then it is already too hot to sustain life as we know it on the rest of the planet!

It's one think for ice shelves and the arctic ice to melt, but continental ice...
Agreed. Natural variations over the last 11,000 say we can go back almost 3 C and it would not be abnormal for natural variations.

F.

And as your chart shows the human race has survived in this narrow band of temperture change. But considering our composition today versus our ancestors of thousands of years ago the change in temperature of 6 - 10 F would cause a massive change in that. Going in either direction would drastically reduce our food supply causing starvation on a massice scale. I'm looking at almost 7 billion human beings coping with this change in temperature and it's consequences.

I don't think that is propaganda. Merely considering the posibillities. When I stated the rise in sea level with the melting of Greenland and Antacrtica I was merely using it's respective masses and turning that into water. Those numbers have been thrown out periodically over the last 5 or so years and I think they are pretty accurate considering that we know the exact mass of each and have enough math majors in the world to calculate that. I'm not really going to worry if ithe numbers are off by a couple of inches or feet. A rise in sea level of 18 - 20 feet would cause severe damage to our coastal cities and God forbid Antacrtica's water content gets thrown in. Since 1850's the ice in Greenland has been receding as have many of the major glaciers in the world. A vast chunk of Antartica's peninsula broke off in 2003 - the Larsen-B - and in 2008 the Wilkins ice shelf consisting of 570 sq km putting the remaining 15K sq km at risk - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica#cite_note-LarsenB-73.

So something is afoot so to say. Having read and watched many a documentary on this subject it has come to my attention that this global warming is a "rhythm/cycle" of the Earth. I believe it occurs naturally and a professer at Penn State by the name of Richard Alley did a study comparing the rise in CO2 and the corresponding melting of the Antarctica ice sheet. He found that they were in sync with one another. As the CO2 rose the ice melted. The cycle repeated itself over a period of 135 - 150K years. He showed that we are now reaching historically high levels of CO2 with a corresponding reduction in the Antarctica ice shelf. Some believe that we are the reason. I believe we are partly to blame. We've most likely accelerated the process rather than caused it. So global warming seems not to be a problem with the Earth just only for it's inhabitants.

As for your contention that in order for the ice to completely melt life on the planet as we know it wouldn't be able to be sustained is most likely true. With rising sea levels we won't have the existing coastal cities we now have today but with advancing technology and our ability to adapt to changing situations we may avert your forseen catastrophy or at least lessen it. Then again maybe not. Damn my crystal ball isn't working very well lately. In fact never did. But my contention was that it would take a substantial time frame for this to occur. This melting over at least 100 - 200 years with small additions to the sea level annually may be exactly what we are in store for. The melting of the ice sheet is already happening and by 2100 it may be adding as much as 5 ft per year to sea level if the current trend continues.
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-05-antarctica-sea-level-rise/

Do we have a problem? Pretty much seems so.

Are human beings the cause? That is hotly debated at this time.

What are we going to do about it?

Well there was this treaty - Kyoto - that was to limit CO2 emmissions from most nations in order to reduce the greenhouse gas effects. But one fatal flaw I saw was that some nations were exempt while the industrial nations would have to submit to a credit system and pay penalties if they exceeded their allocated amounts. Even with this credit system other nations could sell credits to nations that had exceeded their allocated limet and thereby either avoiding paying any penalties or reducing the amount. Taht to me seems counterproductive. But there were 3 nations - India, China and Brazil - that were to be exempt. At the time it was shown - at least the studies I saw - that those 3 nations produced approximately 50% of all CO2 emmissions recorded. So to me the treaty wouldn't be that effective considering that it exempted half the world's CO2 production by those 3 nations.

Those 3 nations nave inferior/old technology and not as efficient as our's is and the fact that their respective govenments were more concerned with getting their nations producing goods and services for their people. The enviroment seems not to be a concern to them. But I can't blame them, either. All emerging nations want the goodies that we Americans have come to take for granted. It would be hypocritical of us to chastise them while the US - 5 % ot the population comsuming 25% ot the planet's energy - continues to go it's own way.

And another clause was for the indutrialized nations of the planet to give to the emerging nations thier latest technology in order to be effective. So the US and Europe are going to hand over to these nations their trade secrets and thereby adversely effect their countries economics in the coming decade and beyond? All in the name of saving the planet? Our politicans sacrificing their careers in order to save us all? Really?

We are now in the process of producing "green" items - be it cars, sources of energy like wind, solar or say it isn't so - the N word - in greater quantities to combat this problem. Houses are being designed with this in mind and I was told by a business associate in CA that new homes out there will have to have some sort of green technology in order to reduce CO2 emmissions and be more energy efficient. So we are in the process of addressing the problem and coming up with some solutions. Will they be enough to stop the tide? Duno. We, as a race, will most likely take some big hits on this in the coming century or two. I believe we'll overcome it but the price tag could/will be staggering because the status quo won't cut it anymore and when you have this type of dramatic change the cost in terms of people's lives and it's quality, current industries and money will be huge.

This debate is only going to get hotter with both sides becoming more vehement.

Stay tuned.

[Extra Stout]

The current life support capacity of the planet has been achieved only through unsustainable means. That is the problem. We made it possible for 9 billion people to be alive at once, but not for long enough to keep a large portion of them from starving.

[Wild Cobra]

I don't think that is propaganda. Merely considering the posibillities. When I stated the rise in sea level with the melting of Greenland and Antacrtica I was merely using it's respective masses and turning that into water. Those numbers have been thrown out periodically over the last 5 or so years and I think they are pretty accurate considering that we know the exact mass of each and have enough math majors in the world to calculate that.
I don't disagree with the height so much. It could be accurate is all ice were to melt. I disagree with the concept that we would be in trouble if it all melted, because, if it all melted, all the temperate places left on earth would already be scorching hot. We would already be moving towards the north and south.

Since 1850's the ice in Greenland has been receding as have many of the major glaciers in the world.
Yes, but the ice content was actually been increasing.

A vast chunk of Antartica's peninsula broke off in 2003 - the Larsen-B - and in 2008 the Wilkins ice shelf consisting of 570 sq km putting the remaining 15K sq km at risk
This happens on occasion, just like the norther ice cap recedes, so does the southern ice. Ice on the ocean comes and goes. It's natural.


I believe it occurs naturally and a professer at Penn State by the name of Richard Alley did a study comparing the rise in CO2 and the corresponding melting of the Antarctica ice sheet. He found that they were in sync with one another. As the CO2 rose the ice melted. The cycle repeated itself over a period of 135 - 150K years.
They have that backwards. As the ocean warms, it releases more CO2... That is what we would see if we created no man made CO2 as well.

The ocean, when all other factors are equal, contains more than 50 times the carbon than the atmosphere does. The atmosphere has it as CO2, and the ocean, primarily as carbonic acid. There are a few equilibriums in play. Without going into too much science, another factor for equilibrium between gasses and liquids is temperature. Liquids absorb far more gasses near freezing and almost no gasses near boiling. Let's start with this diagram from wiki, Carbon Cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Carbon_cycle-cute_diagram.jpeg

Different sources claim different values, but the numerical values mean little for the purpose of illustration. Please note that the atmosphere contains 750 giga tons of carbon. I've seen the actual number before, and it is equal to 383 ppm, or 387 ppm, or something close. I forget the exact number. For simplicity, I'm going say it equals 375 ppm so we have 2 giga tones = 1 ppm.

Now note that between the ocean surface waters and the deep waters, there is 39,120 gigatons of carbon in this cycle. That is a 52.16:1 ratio. With all other things equal, and only CO2 in the atmosphere changing, this ratio will remain constant.

Lets roll back to 1700 and call it 280 ppm. That means the atmosphere would contain 560 giga tons. That is a 190 giga ton change from 1700 to 2004 (2004 is the model year.) This model shows man made Carbon as CO2 at 5.5 gioga tons annually. Other have it as high as 7.5 annually. Lets use 8. If we assume 8 gigatons annually at today's levels, it would take 23.75 years to make the 190 giga ton change. Looks fine on the surface. We could roll it back to 5.5 GtC and use half that number as an average as man goes from 0 to 5.5 and at 2.75 annually, would take 69 years of the 304 years to rise the CO2 concentration. This sound great. The ocean absorbs some, so it takes the 304 years instead of 69 to raise the CO2 to current levels.

But wait...

What happens when we apply that 52.16:1 ratio...

OK, 280 ppm in the atmosphere would mean there is 14605 in the ocean at 1700. Now lets say that we have pushed 8 GtC of carbon into the atmosphere annually since 1700 until 2004. 304 years x 8 = 2432 GtC. If we divide that into 53.16 parts and give 52.16 parts to the ocean and 1 part to the atmosphere, we now have 46 parts added to the atmosphere and 2386 parts to the ocean. We have now changed the atmosphere from 560 GtC to 604 GtC, or from 280 ppm to 302 ppm. At this rate, it would take about 1200 years to raise CO2 levels to where they are today.

What does this mean? Some other factor changed. Especially since we an all agree, we didn't output 8 GtC annually in 1700.

Lets look at what temperature changes do to the equilibrium.

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x262/Wild_Cobra/Global%20Warming/CO2inSeaWater.jpg

Please note that there is a significant change by temperature. Only about a 0.5% change per psu (salinity) but about a 8% change per degree near freezing and about a 3% change per degree near room temperature.

The fact of the matter is that temperature drive CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 does not drive temperature. Even if we didn't add as many GtC to the atmosphere as we did, we would still be near the levels we have.

He showed that we are now reaching historically high levels of CO2 with a corresponding reduction in the Antarctica ice shelf. Some believe that we are the reason. I believe we are partly to blame. We've most likely accelerated the process rather than caused it.

Actually, the Antarctic ice is now greater than the 1979 to 2000 mean.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg

Ice shelves come and go. Part of the natural cycles.


This melting over at least 100 - 200 years with small additions to the sea level annually may be exactly what we are in store for. The melting of the ice sheet is already happening and by 2100 it may be adding as much as 5 ft per year to sea level if the current trend continues.

SAhort tem trends do not predict long term activity. That disaster scenario is nearly impossible, and will definitely not be created by CO2 levels.


Are human beings the cause? That is hotly debated at this time.

CO2 does have a small effect, but nothing like what the alarmists clam. CO2 may have added an additional 0.2 C at most since 1700. Soot likely causes more warming than CO2. The black carbon from coal fired power plants in Asia drift over the Arctic ice cap and Greenland. The sun then melts the ice in these places about 900% faster than it would clean snow and ice. The larger area of exposed ocean absorbs more sunlight that would normally be reflected, warming the ocean. The largest effect to global warming is the source of more than 99% of the Earths heat. The sun. The sun is estimated to have increased in solar irradiance between 0.2% to 0.3%. Seems meaningless, but if you figure a global average of 15 C (59 F), then that is 288 degrees above absolue zero. 0.2% of 288 is 0.56 C and 0.3% of 288 is 0.84 C.

The sun is the biggest contributor to global warming. There can be no debate about this from anyone who truely studies the various geosciences involved.


What are we going to do about it?

Putting scribbers on the Asian power plants is about all that we have control over. CO2 is not the cause of warming, but a byproduct of warming. That is why it tracks temperature, rather than temperature tracking warming.


Well there was this treaty - Kyoto - that was to limit CO2 emmissions from most nations in order to reduce the greenhouse gas effects. But one fatal flaw I saw was that some nations were exempt while the industrial nations would have to submit to a credit system and pay penalties if they exceeded their allocated amounts.
Kyoto is a joke, and a means of politicians exercising more control over us peasants.

Even with this credit system other nations could sell credits to nations that had exceeded their allocated limet and thereby either avoiding paying any penalties or reducing the amount. Taht to me seems counterproductive. But there were 3 nations - India, China and Brazil - that were to be exempt.
Credits are just a way for more control over the people, and friends of the elite to make money starting these businesses.

At the time it was shown - at least the studies I saw - that those 3 nations produced approximately 50% of all CO2 emmissions recorded. So to me the treaty wouldn't be that effective considering that it exempted half the world's CO2 production by those 3 nations.

I don't think it's that high, but they do contribute quite a bit.


Those 3 nations nave inferior/old technology and not as efficient as our's is and the fact that their respective govenments were more concerned with getting their nations producing goods and services for their people. The enviroment seems not to be a concern to them. But I can't blame them, either. All emerging nations want the goodies that we Americans have come to take for granted. It would be hypocritical of us to chastise them while the US - 5 % ot the population comsuming 25% ot the planet's energy - continues to go it's own way.

I wonder what would happen iof we mandated we cannot but imports created with obsolete power technology. At least specify it must be nearly pollution free, CO2 excluded. Although the courts rulled CO2 is a pollutant... I say bullshit.


And another clause was for the indutrialized nations of the planet to give to the emerging nations thier latest technology in order to be effective.
Even our clean burning technologies developed after the EPA was formed is good enough to stop covering the landscape with black carbon. It doewsn't need to be the latest. China just doesn't care if they pollute the air.

So the US and Europe are going to hand over to these nations their trade secrets and thereby adversely effect their countries economics in the coming decade and beyond? All in the name of saving the planet? Our politicans sacrificing their careers in order to save us all? Really?

That's not too hard of a battle, and that is not why we didn't join Kyoto.


We are now in the process of producing "green" items - be it cars, sources of energy like wind, solar or say it isn't so - the N word - in greater quantities to combat this problem. Houses are being designed with this in mind and I was told by a business associate in CA that new homes out there will have to have some sort of green technology in order to reduce CO2 emmissions and be more energy efficient. So we are in the process of addressing the problem and coming up with some solutions.
Except that CO2 is not the problem. Never was, never will be. It's has a logarithmic response. If you look at wiki: Greenhouse Gasses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect) it states that CO2 is 9% to 26% of the greenhouse effect. Here's what that means:

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x262/Wild_Cobra/Global%20Warming/TempvsCO2vspctofgrennhouseeffect-1.jpg

Extended out to 5000 ppm:

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x262/Wild_Cobra/Global%20Warming/TempvsCO2vspctofgrennhouseeffect0to.jpg

Please note that what ever degree you think CO2 has an effect, it takes great changes to make a notable change once you get past 300 ppm.


This debate is only going to get hotter with both sides becoming more vehement.

This debate is cooling since 2004, as the solar activity has decreased and temperatures are dropping again.

[Darrin]

Well my understanding of the greenhouse effect is that it will lead to a new ice age. Am I wrong about that?

[Yonivore]

Well my understanding of the greenhouse effect is that it will lead to a new ice age. Am I wrong about that?
It will lead to whatever the Algore alarmists want it to lead to. One day we burn up, the next, we freeze. Take your pick.

[Wild Cobra]

Well my understanding of the greenhouse effect is that it will lead to a new ice age. Am I wrong about that?
I think you are wrong. I cannot imagine how it would.

The minor ice ages seem to follow the two solar cycles dealing with solar intensity.

http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/GrandMinima.gif

The major ice ages seem to follow the Milankovith Cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Milankovitch_Variations.png

[Wild Cobra]

I don't think that is propaganda. Merely considering the posibillities. When I stated the rise in sea level with the melting of Greenland and Antacrtica I was merely using it's respective masses and turning that into water. Those numbers have been thrown out periodically over the last 5 or so years and I think they are pretty accurate considering that we know the exact mass of each and have enough math majors in the world to calculate that. I'm not really going to worry if ithe numbers are off by a couple of inches or feet. A rise in sea level of 18 - 20 feet would cause severe damage to our coastal cities and God forbid Antacrtica's water content gets thrown in. Since 1850's the ice in Greenland has been receding as have many of the major glaciers in the world.
It is propaganda. I've been trying to convince people, but hard to find facts among all the propaganda. I found something:

Greenland icecap thickens despite warming (http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1485573.htm), part of article:


The 3,000-metre thick Greenland icecap is a key concern in debates about climate change because a total melt would raise world sea levels by about 7 metres. And a runaway thaw might slow the Gulf Stream that keeps the North Atlantic region warm.

Glaciers at sea level have been retreating fast because of a warming climate, making many other scientists believe the entire icecap is thinning.

But satellite measurements showed that more snowfall is falling and thickening the icecap, especially at high altitudes, say Johannessen and team.

"The overall ice thickness changes are ... approximately plus 5 centimetres a year or 54 centimetres over 11 years."

But, they say, the thickening seems consistent with theories of global warming, blamed by most experts on a build-up of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.

Warmer air, even if it is still below freezing, can carry more moisture. That extra moisture falls as snow below 0°C.

And the scientists say that the thickening of the icecap might be offset by a melting of glaciers around the fringes of Greenland. Satellite data is not good enough to measure the melt nearer sea level.

I remember hearing about this and that the Antarctic ice is also thickening. Warming produces more precipitation, and thickens the ice when it falls as snow!

Here's a graphic from another site:

https://sites.google.com/site/bensonfamilyhomepage/_/rsrc/1225664564641/Home/ice-age-and-global-warming/greenland_ice.jpg (https://sites.google.com/site/bensonfamilyhomepage/Home/ice-age-and-global-warming)

Caption for above image:

This map shows areas of ice cap thinning (blue colors) and thickening (tan colors) in Greenland. Computer models indicate that warmer air is carrying larger amounts of snow into the continental interior, while that same warm air is melting the ice near the coasts. The net overall ice thickness is increasing at approximately 5 centimeters a year, meaning more ice is depositing than is melting.