THIS POST IS A SET OF LINKS TO RELATED POSTS ON THE GEOLOGICAL FEATURES OF THE ARCTIC THAT MUST BE TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION IN THE STUDY OF ICE MELT EVENTS IN THE REGION.

RELATED POST#1: A NEW CLIMATE STATE FOR THE ARCTIC: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/09/16/ncar-a-new-climate-state-for-the-arctic/

1. The essence of this research paper is that the failed “Ice-Free-Arctic” fear has been resurrected and re-christened as a “New Climate State“.
2. The paper is based on the assumption that observed year to year declines in September minimum Arctic sea ice extent are driven by anthropogenic global warming and that therefore these trends can be moderated and controlled with climate action to moderate the rate of warming. However no empirical evidence is provided to establish that critical causation relationship.
3. In related posts we find that correlation analysis does not show that September minimum sea ice extent or volume is responsive to anthropogenic global warming temperatures over the Arctic at an annual time scale. LINK#1 https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/07/precipitous-decline-in-arctic-sea-ice-volume/ LINK#2 https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/09/28/sea-ice-extent-area-1979-2018/
4. In the context of the results of correlation analysis presented in the linked documents in item 3 above, it is noted that the ocean floor of the Arctic is geologically very active with significant mantle plume and volcanic activity as described in a related post LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/07/01/arctic/ .
5. As a result, it is not possible to understand the sea ice melt phenomenon in this region purely in terms of atmospheric science. The continued and intensified effort by climate science to do so is a reflection of a debilitating atmosphere bias in that discipline.
6. In Part 3 and Part 4 below we present a history in climate science of a failed obsession with an ice free Arctic and its positive feedback implications. This history implies that the attempt to establish a fear based activism against fossil fuel emissions with a scary spectacle of an ice free Arctic has failed and that the phrase “Ice free Arctic” has lost its potency as a tool for fear based activism against fossil fuels.
7. The ice free Arctic fears presented in the paper under review must be understood in this context. The failed effort over decades to create the fear of an ice free Arctic has diminished the credibility and potency of the phrase “ice free Arctic” and a new language was necessary to present that case. The new language stated as “THE ARCTIC IS TRANSITIONING TO A NEW CLIMATE STATE” is best understood in the context of the history of a failed effort to create fear of an ice free Arctic .
8. The failure of the ICE FREE ARCTIC fearology must be addressed in terms of the data and not with new language and new climate model projections. More importantly, as a science and a scientific endeavor, climate science must resist the need to present climate data to create fear of fossil fuel emissions that requires an excessive reliance on climate models and scary projections based on extreme assumptions. The statistical and logical flaw in the use of extreme values of uncertainty bands in climate science is discussed in a related post on this site LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/04/22/climate-science-uncertainty/
9. ADVOCACY BY CLIMATE SCIENTISTS CREATES A BIAS IN THEIR WORK SUCH THAT THEIR FINDINGS LOSE CREDIBILITY. THIS PATTERN IS SEEN IN THE SORDID HISTORY OF THE “ICE FREE ARCTIC” PRESENTED BELOW.

RELATED POST#2: DEATH SPIRAL OF THE ARCTIC: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/10/15/desperation-language-of-fearology-death-spiral/

1. CLAIM: Last year, the ice sheet lost a record amount of ice, equivalent to 1 million metric tons every minute. RESPONSE: If the ice sheet is losing 1 million tonnes a minute every minute during the summer melt season June to September, it will lose 176 gigatons per year and at that rate, the whole of the Greenland Ice Sheet will be gone in the next 150,000 years while contributing about 0.5mm/year or 5cm per century to sea level rise. Is this a death spiral?
2. CLAIM: The Arctic is unravelling. And it’s happening faster than anyone could have imagined just a few decades ago. RESPONSE: A few decades ago climate scientists were saying that global warming is devastating the Arctic and that the Arctic is screaming, as described in a related post: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/02/22/old-climate-fears-revisited/ There we find that (1) 1999, Sea ice in the Arctic Basin is shrinking by 14000 square miles per year because of global warming caused by human activity according to a new international study that used 46 years of data and climate models to tackle the specific question of whether the loss of Arctic ice is a natural variation or caused by global warming. The computer model says that the probability that these changes were caused by natural variation is 1% but when global warming was added to the model the ice melt was a perfect fit. Therefore the ice melt is caused by human activities that emit greenhouse gases. (2) 2004 Global warming has unleashed massive ecological changes that are already under way. These changes are ushering in a grim future including massive species extinctions, an elevation of sea levels by 3 feet, wholesale changes to the Arctic. (3) 2004: RAPID ARCTIC WARMING BRINGS SEA LEVEL RISE. Increasing greenhouse gases from human activities is causing the Arctic to warm twice as fast as the rest of the planet; in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia winter temperatures have risen by 2C to 4C in the last 50 years; the Arctic will warm by 4C to 7C by 2100. A portion of Greenland’s ice sheet will melt; global sea levels will rise; global warming will intensify. Greenland contains enough melting ice to raise sea levels by 7 meters; Bangkok, Manila, Dhaka, Florida, Louisiana, and New Jersey are at risk of inundation; thawing permafrost and rising seas threaten Arctic coastal regions; climate change will accelerate and bring about profound ecological and social changes; the Arctic is experiencing the most rapid and severe climate change on earth and it’s going to get a lot worse; Arctic summer sea ice will decline by 50% to 100%; polar bears will be driven towards extinction; this report is an urgent SOS for the Arctic; forest fires and insect infestations will increase in frequency and intensity; changing vegetation and rising sea levels will shrink the tundra to its lowest level in 21000 years; vanishing breeding areas for birds and grazing areas for animals will cause extinctions of many species. (4) 2004 GLOBAL WARMING WILL LEAVE ARCTIC ICE FREE. The Arctic ice cap is shrinking at an unprecedented rate and will be gone by 2070. It has shrunk by 15%to 20% in the last 30 years. This process will accelerate with the Arctic warming twice as fast as the rest of the world due to a buildup of heat trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (5) 2007: THE ARCTIC IS SCREAMING. Climate science declares that the low sea ice extent in the Arctic is the leading indicator of climate change. We are told that the Arctic “is screaming”, that Arctic sea ice extent is the “canary in the coal mine”, and that Polar Bears and other creatures in the Arctic are dying off and facing imminent extinction. Scientists say that the melting sea ice has set up a positive feedback system that would cause the summer melts in subsequent years to be greater and greater until the Arctic becomes ice free in the summer of 2012. (6) 2007. Climate scientists say that the Arctic is on its way to becoming ice free in summer and that therefore the polar bear should be declared an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act and we must act quickly and decisively to cut emissions and turn the climate temperature knob down to where the Polar Bear can survive. (7) 2008: ARCTIC SEA ICE IN A DOWNWARD SPIRAL because of positive feedback. Fossil fuels are devastating the Arctic where the volume of sea ice fell to its lowest recorded level to date this year and that reduced ice coverage is causing a non-linear acceleration in the loss of polar ice because there is less ice to reflect sunlight. (8) 2008: THE ARCTIC WILL BE ICE FREE IN SUMMER IN 2008. The unusually low summer sea ice extent in the Arctic in 2007 caused the IPCC to take note and has revise its projection of an ice free Arctic. (9) 2009: Ban Ki-Moon says that he went to the Arctic Ocean and was horrified to see the remains of a glacier that just a few years ago was a majestic mass of ice and that had just collapsed – not slowly melted – just collapsed. He thereby became convinced that the only resolution for the “climate crisis” is a binding emission reduction agreement at the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009. (10) 2009: THE ARCTIC WILL BE ICE FREE IN SUMMER BY THE YEAR 2012. Climate scientists have studied the extreme summer melt of Arctic sea ice in 2007 and found that the summer melt of 2007 was a climate change event and that it implies that the Arctic will be ice free in the summer from 2012 onwards. This is a devastating effect on the planet and our use of fossil fuels is to blame.
3. CLAIM: Northern Siberia and the Canadian Arctic are now warming three times faster than the rest of the world. In the past decade, Arctic temperatures have increased by nearly 1C. If greenhouse gas emissions stay on the same trajectory, we can expect the north to have warmed by 4C year-round by the middle of the century. RESPONSE: It is true that the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world because of certain atmospheric circulation patterns that transfers heat from the Tropics to the Arctic but the rate of warming is not uniform “year-round”. The warming rate is highest in spring (3.9C per century) and lowest in summer (1.4C per century). The winter months are in the middle at about (2.4C per century). These rates imply a mean annualized rate of (2.57C per century) – about twice the rate of the global mean warming rate of (1.3C per century). Details in a related post: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/06/22/global-warming-1979-2019/ . The middle of the century is 2050 – about 30 years away. At the warming rate of 2.6C per century the Arctic will have warmed by 0.8C at most by mid-century. The 4C forecast requires some clarification in this context.
4. CLAIM: In the Arctic, the warm summer months melt away ice and the winter snowfall freezes it back. But as the climate warms, the Arctic loses more ice than it gains back. RESPONSE: Yes, sir! Agreed! This is the mechanism of gradual year by year ice loss in a warming climate.
5. CLAIM: Arctic ice in August 1980: The Greenland Ice Sheet is no longer growing. Instead of gaining new ice every year, it begins to lose roughly 51 billion metric tons annually, discharged into the ocean as meltwater and icebergs. RESPONSE: Yes of course, in a warming climate Greenland will lose some ice on an annual basis and at 51 gigatons per year, that melt will contribute 0.142mm/year to sea level rise and if this loss persists for a few thousand years, the whole of the Greenland Ice Sheet will be gone in about 500,000 years unless the next glaciation cycle of the Quaternary Ice Age intervenes.
6. CLAIM: August 2010: A chunk of ice four times the size of Manhattan breaks off the Petermann Glacier, causing the ice sheet to retreat 18 kilometers. With little snow falling during winter, Greenland’s ice cap is subjected to record melting which lasts 50 days longer than average. RESPONSE: Taking the height of the World Trade Center as the height, the volume of “the size of Manhattan” is 32.0463 cubic km and a chunk of ice that size weighs 32.0463 gigatons and one that is four times the size of Manhattan weighs 128 gigatons. If this exceptional Manhattan event happens every August, the melting of Greenland will contribute 0.357mm/year to sea level rise and the Greenland Ice sheet will be gone in about 200,000 years. The use of geographical references to denote ice volume is not a good way to communicate the amount of ice that is at issue.
7. CLAIM: Even if we stop all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, Arctic sea ice will continue melting for decades. RESPONSE: The time span implied by decades is not a very long period in in the context of a century of ice melt dynamics and without an AGW climate change implication because of the internal climate variability issue: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/07/16/the-internal-variability-issue/
8. CLAIM: There is no facet of Arctic life that remains untouched by the immensity of change here, except perhaps the eternal dance between light and darkness. The Arctic as we know it – a vast icy landscape where reindeer roam, polar bears feast, and waters teem with cod and seals – will soon be frozen only in memory. RESPONSE: There is in fact no facet of human life anywhere on earth that remains untouched by the immensity of the climate in shaping our lives. For example the Holocene – and specifically the Holocene Climate Optimum period – created human civilization and our social structure out of animal-like humans who lived isolated in caves: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/08/20/the-holocene-optimum-period-a-bibliography/ and it was the climate change of the Medieval Warm Period that took the Norsemen settle in Greenland: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/04/02/mwp/ and the Little Ice Age that killed those settlers and ended the Viking settlement of Greenland LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/07/19/liaclimatologybibliography/ Climate has an enormous impact on our lives and this impact is what drives the climate superstitions that have been with us all though human history and still is, as evidenced in this Guardian assessment of climate change: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/08/03/confirmationbias/
9. CLAIM: A new Nature Climate Change study predicts that summer sea ice floating on the surface of the Arctic Ocean could disappear entirely by 2035. Until relatively recently, scientists didn’t think we would reach this point until 2050 at the earliest. Reinforcing this finding, last month Arctic sea ice reached its second-lowest extent in the , the 41-year satellite record. RESPONSE: As seen in ITEM#5 above, the “ICE-FREE-ARCTIC” being forecast here has a long and sordid history in climate science. This kind of obsession with fear mongering does not speak well of what is often advertised as “THE SCIENCE” that in and of itself should validate everything climate scientists say. LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/18/the-ice-free-arctic-obsession-of-agw/ .
10. CLAIM; The latest models are basically showing that no matter what emissions scenario we follow, we’re going to lose summer sea ice cover before the middle of the century. says Julienne Stroeve, a senior research scientist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. “Even if we keep warming to less than 2C, it’s still enough to lose that summer sea ice in some years. RESPONSE: The strange and failed obsession of climate science with the ice free Arctic prediction continues unabated. It is odd to the point of bizarre. LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/18/the-ice-free-arctic-obsession-of-agw/
11. CLAIM: At outposts in the Canadian Arctic, permafrost is thawing 70 years sooner than predicted. Roads are buckling. Houses are sinking. In Siberia, giant craters pockmark the tundra as temperatures soar, hitting 100F (38C) in the town of Verkhoyansk in July. RESPONSE: An odd falsehood that seems to have become institutionalized in climate science is that failed forecasts are celebrated as being even more right than previously thought if the data are scarier than the forecast. That the permafrost forecast was off by 70 years does not mean that it was even more right than previously thought. It means that the forecast was wrong. The biased interpretation of the error is evidence of a significant level of confirmation bias in climate science: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/06/29/diffenbaugh-2017-extreme-weather-of-climate-change/ .
12. CLAIM: The soaring heat leads to raging wildfires, now common in hotter and drier parts of the Arctic. In recent summers, infernos have torn across the tundra of Sweden, Alaska, and Russia, destroying native vegetation. RESPONSE: These are time and geography constrained climate events that have no interpretation in terms of anthropogenic global warming. LINK#1: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/07/19/agw-heat-wave-in-siberia/ LINK#2: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/07/13/siberian-heat-larming-climate-scientists/ LINK#3: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/07/16/the-internal-variability-issue/
13. CLAIM: This hurts the millions of reindeer and caribou who eat mosses, lichens, and stubbly grasses. Disastrous rain-on-snow events have also increased in frequency, locking the ungulates’ preferred forage foods in ice; between 2013 and 2014, an estimated 61,000 animals died on Russia’s Yamal peninsula due to mass starvation during a rainy winter. Overall, the global population of reindeer and caribou has declined by 56% in the last 20 years. RESPONSE: Climate science has determined that that global warming is killing off the caribou because warming causes freezing rain in the calving season and that makes it hard for calving caribou to feed. The data presented show a population decline for the caribou. However, as shown in a related post, the decline in caribou population is not sustained leading to a very different interpretation of the same data. LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/03/09/caribou/ .
14. CLAIM: Such losses have devastated the indigenous people whose culture and livelihoods are interwoven with the plight of the reindeer and caribou. Inuit use all parts of the caribou: sinew for thread, hide for clothing, antlers for tools, and flesh for food. In Europe and Russia, the Sami people herd thousands of reindeer across the tundra. Warmer winters have forced many of them to change how they conduct their livelihoods, for example by providing supplemental feed for their reindeer. Yet some find opportunities in the crisis. Melting ice has made the region’s abundant mineral deposits and oil and gas reserves more accessible by ship. China is heavily investing in the increasingly ice-free Northern Sea Route over the top of Russia, which promises to cut shipping times between the Far East and Europe by 10 to 15 days. The Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago could soon yield another shortcut. And in Greenland, vanishing ice is unearthing a wealth of uranium, zinc, gold, iron and rare earth elements. In 2019, Donald Trump claimed he was considering buying Greenland from Denmark. Never before has the Arctic enjoyed such political relevance. Tourism has boomed, at least until the Covid shutdown, with throngs of wealthy visitors drawn to this exotic frontier in hopes of capturing the perfect selfie under the aurora borealis. Between 2006 and 2016, the impact from winter tourism increased by over 600%. The city of Tromsø, Norway, dubbed the “Paris of the north”, welcomed just 36,000 tourists in the winter of 2008-09. By 2016, that number had soared to 194,000. Underlying such interest, however, is an unspoken sentiment: that this might be the last chance people have to experience the Arctic as it once was. RESPONSE: The Arctic is the home of the indigenous Inuit, a proud, tough, and highly talented race of survivors that have lived, survived, and prospered in the Arctic since the icy cold of the last glaciation, through the Younger Dryas cooling, through 8200, 6300, 4700, 2700, 1550 and 550YBP cold periods and the the extreme warming, ice melt, and sea level rise of the Holocene Climate Optimum, the Minoan warm period that destroyed the Late Bronze Age civilization, the Medieval warm period that brought the Norsemen to Greenland, and the Little Ice Age that killed off the Norsemen in Greenland. Through it all the Inuit have survived, thrived, grown, and prospered. And they are still here today surviving wonderfully as only they know how. It is an extreme form of racism for the European races to play the role of caretakers of these incredible Arctic people. They don’t need the Europeans to feel sorry for them or to take care of them and to help them to survive global warming. They certainly don’t need Europeans to meddle in Arctic affairs and to keep them from the economic bonanza off the Northwest Passage.

RELATED POST#3: RECORD ARCTIC SEA ICE MELT: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/07/30/record-arctic-sea-ice-melt/

We conclude from this analysis as follows:  The data do show declining Arctic sea ice  volume during a period of rising temperature but without evidence for the assumed causation of sea ice decline by AGW and therefore without support for the claim that these changes are driven by AGW and that therefore they can be attenuated with climate action in the form of reducing or eliminating fossil fuel emissions.

10. A MORE DETAILED ANALYSIS IS PROVIDED IN A RELATED POST ON THIS SITE [LINK] . SIMILAR ANALYSIS FOR SEA ICE EXTENT AND AREA ARE PROVIDED IN YET ANOTHER RELATED POST ON THIS SITE [LINK] . No evidence is found that the observed decline in Arctic sea ice extent or volume is driven by the rising temperature  of anthropogenic global warming above the Arctic Ocean.

IT IS THEREFORE PROPOSED THAT SEA ICE DYNAMICS IN THIS REGION CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD PURELY IN ATMOSPHERIC TERMS BECAUSE OF THE KNOWN GEOLOGICAL FEATURES OF THE REGION THAT MUST BE TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION IN THE STUDY OF SEA ICE MELT.  : [LINK] 

RELATED POST#4: ARCTIC GEOLOGY LECTURE BY JAMES KAMIS: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/07/01/arctic/

The image below shows the 6,000 km long Mid Arctic Rift and its associated active volcanoes. The rift is seen along the right side of the left frame of the image as a long and curvy red hashed area. The red triangles mark the positions of known active volcanoes along the rift. Also shown on this slide is the Greenland/Iceland mantle plume. On the left of Greenland is the Baffin Bay Labrador rift system marked as BBLR. In the left upper corner on the slide is a red hashed area where active volcano locations are marked with red triangles. It is the Aleutian Island convergent plate boundary where two giant plates collide and one dives under the other and creates a tremendous amount of geological energy that becomes evident on the surface.

1. Arctic Sea Ice: The image below depicts extent of Arctic sea ice in October 2017. This sea ice distribution is representative of sea ice extent in the month of October for the decade ending in 2017. In the color grey are shown the adjacent land areas as Greenland, Canada, and Russia. The red hashed areas mark the sea ice extent prior to the recent decade. The graphic shows that loss of sea extent in agreement with climate science claims that AGW is causing a decrease in Arctic sea ice extent. The loss of sea ice is found to have occurred in two specific areas as shown by the red hashed lines. In the lower left is the western edge of sea ice melt and in the upper right is the eastern edge of sea ice melt. Localization of the melting in these areas has been consistent and persistent over a long period of time of at least 50 years. Note that the sea ice extends out to Russia with no melt zone. The geographical pattern in sea ice melt does not suggest a uniform cause of sea ice melt but rather a geographically defined sources of heat that match the melt pattern.
2. Geological Drivers of Arctic Sea Ice Melt: The image below shows the pattern of localized geological sources heat and further that this pattern of geological heat matches the pattern of sea ice melt. In the  image below we see the sea ice extent in white and some red hashed areas. The red hatched areas of the Arctic Sea mark the locations of significant atmospheric methane concentrations above the Arctic Sea in April of 2014 detected by NASA satellites. The black lines in the image mark the center-line of the Mid-Arctic and Baffin Bay rift and associated cross faults. The center line is where lava comes up and spreads out. The observed localized geographical pattern of atmospheric methane concentration began in April 2014 when a moderate earthquake along the Mid-Arctic Rift caused a shifting of deep magma chambers. The shifted magma chambers released heat and hydrothermal methane into deep portions of the rift. The heat and methane moved upwards along he fault plane that had been opened by the earthquake. In the process, the heat encountered methane hydrates in ice beds. The heat released methane from the hydrates. The methane along with hydrothermal methane migrated up through the fault and into the overlying ocean. The heat warmed the ocean and the methane entered the atmosphere and created the sudden localized methane concentration. It was a geographically extensive heat flow event, not atmospheric phenomena  that caused Arctic sea ice melt.

The Jan Mayen Trend: The Jan Mayen Trend (JMT) is a 1500-km portion of the mid-Arctic rift that is volcanically active. The right frame of the image below shows the location of the JMT. It runs from just north of Iceland up to the Svalbard Islands. Research by Dr. Rolf Pederson of the University of Bergen reported an amazing discovery about the JMT. He writes, “1,200C magma pouring into the sea from hundreds of submarine volcanoes and we wonder why the seas are warming?”  He went on to say “We have found volcanoes at such a shallow level that they could break through to the surface at any moment and form new island groups. I have been writing about underwater volcanoes for years. In fact there is an entire chapter in my new book “Not by fire but by Ice” that discusses the importance of underwater volcanoes and how they are heating the seas”. The JMP ends at the Svalbard Islands. Research for this region shows an extreme amount of underwater heat flow and methane emissions in an around the Svalbard Islands. Also some of the glaciers on the islands are melting and retreating while others are growing.

Greenland Heat Flows: The left frame in the image below is from a NASA 2018 research paper. It documents the geological time frame for the movement of Greenland across the Greenland-Iceland mantle plume. The black dashed line shows the path of the movement of Greenland across the mantle plume. The color shadings are NASA’s interpretation of the present day heat flow of the rocks in Greenland. It shows that the heat flow map matches the course of the mantle plume. This heat flow is relic heat flow in the sense that it is heat that is captured but occasionally pulses out of the bedrock beneath the glaciers in Greenland. The right frame of the image below shows a specific example of how this relic heat flow has affected the bedrock and associated overlying individual glaciers. Research at Aarhus University in Denmark found in the Young’s Sound glacier (seen in the right frame) as it is pouring into the Greenland Sea, that its upward catchment basin on the bedrock was extremely hot. They decided that this heat was the reason that this glacier was moving so quickly and receding so quickly. They rejected atmospheric warming as a cause of these events.

Bering Sea Volcanoes and Ocean Currents: The sea ice decline on the Western edge of the Arctic is controlled by the Bering Sea. The Bering Sea is a closed basin. The image below shows the Aleutian Islands and their 90 or so active volcanoes. On the upper left portion of the image below is the Kamchatka Peninsula and its 70 or so very active volcanoes. The ocean currents move from the Kamchatka Peninsula south and then north through the center portion of the Bering Sea and empty into the Western portion of the Arctic Ocean. Another current on the South-side of the Aleutian Islands takes a turn, goes through a gap along the Eastern side of the Bering Sea and empties into the Western side of the Arctic Ocean. The Bering Sea is very warm & it empties into the Arctic Ocean and melts the ice on the western side.

THE WARM BLOB OF 2010:  In the image below, the left frame shows the ocean current flows of Gulf Stream on May 26, 2010. It shows that the Gulf Stream current, (in red) as it moves along the Eastern seaboard of the USA is suddenly blocked in 2010 by a large Warm Blob. A warm blob is a large section of ocean water with a higher temperature than the surrounding ocean). The warm blob had formed rapidly. It extended from the surface of the ocean down to the ocean floor. This was a very large and powerful warm blob. In the right frame, the lower slide shows the warm blob in red in its early stages of development. The graphic makes clear that the warm blob is associated with heat flow. The warm blob itself is shown in red. Iceland, a net source of heat in the blob’s heat flow dynamic, is located just to the right of the southernmost portion of Greenland. In black lines are marked the Mid Arctic Rift and the Labrador Rift and their spreading center lines converge in the warm blob area. This arrangement suggests that the warm blob is the creation of a pulse of heat flow from these rifts. The upper slide of the right frame in an image of the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. It should be noted that the Gulf Stream shutdown is coincident with the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, both occurring in April 2010. Although it cannot be said that this eruption itself created the warm blob, it is noted that the eruption is the evidence of accumulated heat flows along the rift that was active in the area over a long period of time. The eruption was simply the orgasmic end of the pulse of heat flow. In the same way these heat flows also resulted in the sudden creation of the warm blob coincident with the eruption. In other words the 2010 eruption and the 2010 warm blob are related not as cause and effect but as effects of a common cause.

 In summary, the Arctic Ocean, specifically the sea floor of the Arctic Ocean is not a static bedrock platform. A 3D image of the Arctic sea floor in the image below shows the elevated sea floor of one of the rifts. The circular cone shaped features are deep ocean volcanoes. The uplifted mountains are very active faults. The dynamics of sea ice melt and the temperature and chemical changes in sea water in the Arctic as well as animal migration patterns are best understood in terms of the geological phenomena in this geologically active zone and not exclusively in terms of atmospheric forcings as assumed in climate science. A statistical test of sea ice melt data presented in a related post [LINK]  supports these conclusions. 

RELATED POST#5: THE GREENLAND ICELAND MANTLE PLUME: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/10/30/the-greenland-iceland-mantle-plume/

HERE WE PRESENT THE CASE THAT THE REGION IN QUESTION IS GEOLOGICALLY ACTIVE WITH MAGMATIC AND VOLCANIC ACTIVITY ALONG THE JAN MAYEN TREND AND THE GREENLAND-ICELAND MANTLE PLUME AND THAT THEREFORE A PURELY ATMOSPHERIC INTERPRETATION OF ICE MELT EVENTS IN THIS REGION IS NOT POSSIBLE WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT AND UNBIASED EVIDENCE OF SUCH CAUSATION.  It is noted that there is significant geological activity in the form of volcanism and mantle flows around and under Iceland and Greenland that derive from the Mid Arctic Rift, the Greenland-Iceland mantle plume and the Baffin Bay-Labrador rift system. Geothermal heat flux from these seafloor activities play an important role in Greenland ice sheet and sea ice dynamics in the Arctic and therefore these phenomena cannot be understood purely in terms of atmospheric forcing implied by anthropogenic global warming. This is why sea ice melt dynamics do not correspond with global warming temperature as shown in related posts on this site. LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/09/25/list-of-arctic-sea-ice-posts/ . The role of anthropogenic global warming in these events can only be understood in the context of these geothermal heat fluxes. More importantly, the role of anthropogenic global warming in these ice melt dynamics derived exclusively from an atmosphere bias is not credible.

As the North American continental plate carried Greenland north, it glided over a relatively stationary hot spot – the same spot that later formed Iceland after Greenland had moved on, leaving the hot spot to punch out a new land mass from the crust beneath the sea. Tracing Greenland’s movement over 100 million years, carrying it over a hot spot that later formed Iceland. Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio; Blue Marble data courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA Goddard) The scar’s track through Greenland still shows a measurable heat signature, according to a study published in August 2018. Led by Yasmina M. Martos, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

RELATED POST#6: ICELAND’S VANISHING GLACIERS: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/02/02/vanishing-glaciers/

CLAIM: Iceland’s Skaftafellsjokull is a spur from the nation’s Vatnajokull ice cap, which is Europe’s largest glacier. In 1989, photographer Colin Baxter visited the glacier during a family holiday and took a picture of the frozen landscape (THE SECOND PICTURE ABOVE). Colin’s son, Dr Kieran Baxter, returned to the exact location 30 years later: (THE FIRST PICTURE ABOVE). The comparison shows that the glacier had dramatically retreated. Scientists estimate it had shrunk by about 400 square kilometres as a result of climate change. Dr Kieran Baxter, University of Dundee: “It is personally devastating to see them change so drastically in the past few decades. On surface appearances, the extent of the climate crisis often remains largely invisible but here we can see clearly the gravity of the situation that is affecting the entire globe. The rate of decline of the glacier over a 30-year period is personally devastating. Globally, the world’s glaciers are considered to be among the most visual indicators of how the world’s climate is warming“. RESPONSE: The Arctic region, specifically the area around and under Iceland and Greenland are geologically active. The 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano serves as an example of the kind of geothermal energy that Iceland can be subjected to. The relevant geological features include the Mid Arctic Rift system (MARS), the Baffin Bay Labrador rift system(BBLR), the Jan Mayen Trend (JMT), and the Greenland-Iceland Mantle Plume (GIMP). The sea floor in this region, and particularly along the JMT, is not a static bedrock but a very active region of submarine volcanism. The geological features of this region facilitate significant heat flow from the mantle to the surface. For these reasons, it is not possible to understand ice melt events and glacial decline in Iceland exclusively as atmospheric phenomena. Attribution of such events in Iceland and Greenland can only be made in the context of the greater effect of geological activity.

RELATED POST#7: SUB SURFACE GEOLOGY OF THE YAMAL PENINSULA: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/12/01/siberia-sub-surface-geology/

Thawing Siberia: The permafrost of the Siberian tundra is definitely thawing. Permafrost is soil that stays frozen year-round; it locks up organic materials like dead plants (or the corpses of mammoths) and keeps them from rotting. When the permafrost thaws, all that organic material starts to decompose, like food left too long in a broken refrigerator. The decomposition releases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, all potent greenhouse gases. Climate scientists agree that the permafrost melt will amplify the effects of greenhouse gases released by human activities, which could worsen the amount of warming the planet experiences. The most pervasive route for permafrost thaw in Siberia is what’s called active-layer deepening. Every summer, the top layer of permafrost that thaws gets deeper and deeper. That’s happening across the Arctic and boreal forests. More dramatic are collapse features, known as thermokarsts. When frozen-solid soil melts, it can collapse in many ways. Giant craters observed in Siberia over the past few years could be thermokarsts created when decomposition gases, such as methane, put pressure on the overlying earth, causing dirt-covered ice hills called pingos to explode. Researchers found thousands of small underground gas pockets with high levels of methane and carbon dioxide dotting the landscape and more than 200 Arctic lakes are “bubbling with methane gas although these images reveal little about what’s actually bubbling up. The seeps could be methane, or other gases, or just groundwater. Though permafrost melting could be a scary contributor to climate change, the tundra has not yet hit the “point of no return” at which runaway melt is inevitable. The key is really limiting human emissions as quickly as possible, because in 30 or 40 or 50 years from now, if we have gone past that point, there will be nothing we can do about it. RESPONSE: the Yamal Peninsula along with other adjacent Arctic regions of Siberia are geologically active with natural gas reserves. This area has a long history of sub-surface gas and methane formations that can explode particularly when they are in or under a pingo. A long history of this phenomenon in the paleo record goes back to the formation and the Yamal Crater. The geological explanation of these subsurface explosions is proposed in terms of cryo-volcanism that is a unique feature of the cold icy regions with natural gas deposits. The anthropogenic global warming interpretation of these events as harbingers of climate change gone out of control is probably best understood in terms of climate change activism’s need to push for climate action in the form of a binding global agreement to move the global energy infrastructure from fossil fuels to renewables. The weakness in this argument is acknowledged but then ignored in the interpretation of these subsurface gas explosions in terms of a heightened need for urgent climate action.

RELATED POST#8: Climate change is pushing warmer Atlantic currents into the Arctic and breaking up the usual stratification between warm deep waters and the cool surface. This also makes it difficult for ice to form: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/10/28/arctic-warming-alarm-of-october-2020/

Climate change is pushing warmer Atlantic currents into the Arctic and breaking up the usual stratification between warm deep waters and the cool surface. This also makes it difficult for ice to form. For the first time since records began, the main nursery of Arctic sea ice in Siberia has yet to start freezing in late October. The delayed annual freeze in the Laptev Sea has been caused by freakishly protracted warmth in northern Russia and the intrusion of Atlantic waters, say climate scientists who warn of possible knock-on effects across the polar region. Ocean temperatures in the area recently climbed to more than 5C above average, following a record breaking heatwave and the unusually early decline of last winter’s sea ice. The trapped heat takes a long time to dissipate into the atmosphere, even at this time of the year when the sun creeps above the horizon for little more than an hour or two each day. Graphs of sea-ice extent in the Laptev Sea, which usually show a healthy seasonal pulse, appear to have flat-lined. As a result, there is a record amount of open sea in the Arctic. “The lack of freeze-up so far this fall is unprecedented in the Siberian Arctic region,” said Zachary Labe, a postdoctoral researcher at Colorado State University. He says this is in line with the expected impact of human-driven climate change. 2020 is another year that is consistent with a rapidly changing Arctic. Without a systematic reduction in greenhouse gases, the likelihood of our first ‘ice-free’ summer will continue to increase by the mid-21st century,” (Zack Labe). This year’s Siberian heatwave was made at least 600 times more likely by industrial and agricultural emissions, according to an earlier study. The warmer air temperature is not the only factor slowing the formation of ice. Climate change is also pushing more balmy Atlantic currents into the Arctic and breaking up the usual stratification between warm deep waters and the cool surface. This also makes it difficult for ice to form. This continues a streak of very low extents. The last 14 years, 2007 to 2020, are the lowest 14 years in the satellite record starting in 1979,. The Arctic is now disappearing, leaving thinner seasonal ice. Overall the average thickness is half what it was in the 1980s.The downward trend is likely to continue until the Arctic has its first ice-free summer. The data and models suggest this will occur between 2030 and 2050. “It’s a matter of when, not if. Scientists are concerned the delayed freeze could amplify feedbacks that accelerate the decline of the sea ice. It is already well known that a smaller area of ice means less of a white area to reflect the sun’s heat back into space. But this is not the only reason the Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the global average. The Laptev Sea is known as the birthplace of ice, which forms along the coast there in early winter, then drifts westward carrying nutrients across the Arctic, before breaking up in the spring in the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard. If ice forms late in the Laptev, it will be thinner and thus more likely to melt before it reaches the Fram Strait. This could mean fewer nutrients for Arctic plankton, which will then have a reduced capacity to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. More open sea also means more turbulence in the upper layer of the Arctic ocean, which draws up more warm water from the depths. The sea ice trends are grim but not surprising. “It is more frustrating than shocking. This has been forecast for a long time, but there has been little substantial response by decision-makers.

RESPONSE: ABOUT THE LAPTEV SEA: The Laptev Sea is the southern termination of the Gakkel spreading ridge. The Laptev Rift System consists of several deep subsided rifts and high standing blocks of the basement. Details of this geological feature are described by Sergey Drachev in his paper on the geology of the continental shelf of the Laptev Sea. The full text of the paper is available on request. The Arctic is geologically active and its temperature and sea ice dynamics cannot be understood exclusively in terms of the atmosphere above the sea ice without consideration of the geology of the region below the sea ice described in a related post on this site : LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/07/01/arctic/ . Further evidence of geological activity and hydrothermal venting in this regions is described in the bibliography below and in a summary of the relevant information on geological activity in the Laptev Sea area of the Arctic. Based on these data we propose that sea ice dynamics in this region cannot be understood exclusively in terms of atmospheric phenomena. Statistical analysis of Arctic sea ice dynamics does not show a correlation with atmospheric temperature phenomena. Details of this issue are presented in related posts on this site listed below.

GEOLOGY OF THE GAKKEL RIDGE AND LAPTEV SEA RIFT SYSTEM

The Laptev Sea is south of the Gakkel slow spreading ridge. This region is geologically active with seafloor geological features consisting of episodic but intense events of hydrothermal plumes, explosive volcanism, and magmatic flows. Sea ice dynamics and extreme ocean temperature anomalies in this region cannot be understood strictly in terms of atmospheric phenomena such as anthropogenic global warming particularly so when the sea ice dynamics at issue are episodic, localized, and extreme. In light of the influence of the Gakkel Ridge, the study of sea ice and sea surface temperature events in the region must be inclusive of these geological features. The Arctic in general is a very geologically active area and the study of ice melt and ocean temperature events in there must pay attention to these significant sources of heat. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Baker, Edward T., et al. “Hydrothermal venting in magma deserts: The ultraslow‐spreading Gakkel and Southwest Indian Ridges.” Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 5.8 (2004). Detailed hydrothermal surveys over ridges with spreading rates of 50–150 mm/yr have found a linear relation between spreading rate and the spatial frequency of hydrothermal venting, but the validity of this relation at slow and ultraslow ridges is unproved. Here we compare hydrothermal plume surveys along three sections of the Gakkel Ridge (Arctic Ocean) and the Southwest Indian Ridge (SWIR) to determine if hydrothermal activity is similarly distributed among these ultraslow ridge sections and if these distributions follow the hypothesized linear trend derived from surveys along fast ridges. Along the Gakkel Ridge, most apparent vent sites occur on volcanic highs, and the extraordinarily weak vertical density gradient of the deep Arctic permits plumes to rise above the axial bathymetry. Individual plumes can thus be extensively dispersed along axis, to distances >200 km, and ∼75% of the total axial length surveyed is overlain by plumes. Detailed mapping of these plumes points to only 9–10 active sites in 850 km, however, yielding a site frequency F_s, sites/100 km of ridge length, of 1.1–1.2. Plumes detected along the SWIR are considerably less extensive for two reasons: an apparent paucity of active vent fields on volcanic highs and a normal deep‐ocean density gradient that prevents extended plume rise. Along a western SWIR section (10°–23°E) we identify 3–8 sites, so F_s = 0.3–0.8; along a previously surveyed 440 km section of the eastern SWIR (58°–66°E), 6 sites yield F_s = 1.3. Plotting spreading rate (u_s) versus F_s, the ultraslow ridges and eight other ridge sections, spanning the global range of spreading rate, establish a robust linear trend (F_s = 0.98 + 0.015u_s), implying that the long‐term heat supply is the first‐order control on the global distribution of hydrothermal activity. Normalizing F_s to the delivery rate of basaltic magma suggests that ultraslow ridges are several times more efficient than faster‐spreading ridges in supporting active vent fields. This increased efficiency could derive from some combination of three‐dimensional magma focusing at volcanic centers, deep mining of heat from gabbroic intrusions and direct cooling of the upper mantle, and nonmagmatic heat supplied by exothermic serpentinization.
2. Edwards, M. H., et al. “Evidence of recent volcanic activity on the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel ridge.” Nature 409.6822 (2001): 808-812. Seafloor spreading is accommodated by volcanic and tectonic processes along the global mid-ocean ridge system. As spreading rate decreases the influence of volcanism also decreases^1,2,3,4, and it is unknown whether significant volcanism occurs at all at ultraslow spreading rates (<1.5 cm yr^-1). Here we present three-dimensional sonar maps of the Gakkel ridge, Earth’s slowest-spreading mid-ocean ridge, located in the Arctic basin under the Arctic Ocean ice canopy. We acquired this data using hull-mounted sonars attached to a nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Hawkbill. Sidescan data for the ultraslow-spreading (∼1.0 cm yr^-1) eastern Gakkel ridge depict two young volcanoes covering approximately 720 km² of an otherwise heavily sedimented axial valley. The western volcano coincides with the average location of epicentres for more than 250 teleseismic events detected^5,26 in 1999, suggesting that an axial eruption was imaged shortly after its occurrence. These findings demonstrate that eruptions along the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel ridge are focused at discrete locations and appear to be more voluminous and occur more frequently than was previously thought.
3. Sohn, Robert A., et al. “Explosive volcanism on the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel ridge, Arctic Ocean.” Nature 453.7199 (2008): 1236-1238. Roughly 60% of the Earth’s outer surface is composed of oceanic crust formed by volcanic processes at mid-ocean ridges. Although only a small fraction of this vast volcanic terrain has been visually surveyed or sampled, the available evidence suggests that explosive eruptions are rare on mid-ocean ridges, particularly at depths below the critical point for seawater (3,000 m)¹. A pyroclastic deposit has never been observed on the sea floor below 3,000 m, presumably because the volatile content of mid-ocean-ridge basalts is generally too low to produce the gas fractions required for fragmenting a magma at such high hydrostatic pressure. We employed new deep submergence technologies during an International Polar Year expedition to the Gakkel ridge in the Arctic Basin at 85° E, to acquire photographic and video images of ‘zero-age’ volcanic terrain on this remote, ice-covered ridge. Here we present images revealing that the axial valley at 4,000 m water depth is blanketed with unconsolidated pyroclastic deposits, including bubble wall fragments (limu o Pele)², covering a large (>10 km²) area. At least 13.5 wt% CO₂ is necessary to fragment magma at these depths³, which is about tenfold the highest values previously measured in a mid-ocean-ridge basalt⁴. These observations raise important questions about the accumulation and discharge of magmatic volatiles at ultraslow spreading rates on the Gakkel ridge⁵ and demonstrate that large-scale pyroclastic activity is possible along even the deepest portions of the global mid-ocean ridge volcanic system.
4. Michael, P. J., et al. “Magmatic and amagmatic seafloor generation at the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel ridge, Arctic Ocean.” Nature 423.6943 (2003): 956-961. A high-resolution mapping and sampling study of the Gakkel ridge was accomplished during an international ice-breaker expedition to the high Arctic and North Pole in summer 2001. For this slowest-spreading endmember of the global mid-ocean-ridge system, predictions were that magmatism should progressively diminish as the spreading rate decreases along the ridge, and that hydrothermal activity should be rare. Instead, it was found that magmatic variations are irregular, and that hydrothermal activity is abundant. A 300-kilometre-long central amagmatic zone, where mantle peridotites are emplaced directly in the ridge axis, lies between abundant, continuous volcanism in the west, and large, widely spaced volcanic centres in the east. These observations demonstrate that the extent of mantle melting is not a simple function of spreading rate: mantle temperatures at depth or mantle chemistry (or both) must vary significantly along-axis. Highly punctuated volcanism in the absence of ridge offsets suggests that first-order ridge segmentation is controlled by mantle processes of melting and melt segregation. The strong focusing of magmatic activity coupled with faulting may account for the unexpectedly high levels of hydrothermal activity observed.
5. Edmonds, H. N., et al. “Discovery of abundant hydrothermal venting on the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel ridge in the Arctic Ocean.” Nature 421.6920 (2003): 252-256. Submarine hydrothermal venting along mid-ocean ridges is an important contributor to ridge thermal structure¹, and the global distribution of such vents has implications for heat and mass fluxes from the Earth’s crust and mantle and for the biogeography of vent-endemic organisms. Previous studies have predicted that the incidence of hydrothermal venting would be extremely low on ultraslow-spreading ridges (ridges with full spreading rates <2 cm yr^-1—which make up 25 per cent of the global ridge length), and that such vent systems would be hosted in ultramafic in addition to volcanic rocks^4,5. Here we present evidence for active hydrothermal venting on the Gakkel ridge, which is the slowest spreading (0.6–1.3 cm yr^-1) and least explored mid-ocean ridge. On the basis of water column profiles of light scattering, temperature and manganese concentration along 1,100 km of the rift valley, we identify hydrothermal plumes dispersing from at least nine to twelve discrete vent sites. Our discovery of such abundant venting, and its apparent localization near volcanic centres, requires a reassessment of the geologic conditions that control hydrothermal circulation on ultraslow-spreading ridges.
6. Hellebrand, Eric, Jonathan E. Snow, and Richard Mühe. “Mantle melting beneath Gakkel Ridge (Arctic Ocean): abyssal peridotite spinel compositions.” Chemical Geology 182.2-4 (2002): 227-235. The ultraslow spreading Gakkel Ridge represents one of the most extreme spreading environments on the Earth. Full spreading rates there of 0.6–1.3 cm/year and Na_8.0 in basalts of 3.3 imply an extremely low degree of mantle partial melting. For this reason, the complementary degree of melting registered by abyssal peridotite melting residues is highly interesting. In a single sample of serpentinized peridotite from Gakkel Ridge, we found spinels which, though locally altered, have otherwise unzoned and thus primary compositions in the cores of the grains. These reflect a somewhat higher degree of melting of the uppermost oceanic mantle than indicated by basalt compositions. Cr/(Cr+Al) ratios of these grains lie between 0.23 and 0.24, which is significantly higher than spinels from peridotites collected along the faster spreading Mid-Atlantic and Southwest Indian Ridges. Crustal thickness at Gakkel Ridge can be calculated from the peridotite spinel compositions, and is thicker than the crustal thickness of less than 4 km estimated from gravity data, or predicted from global correlations between spreading rate and seismically determined crustal thickness. The reason for this unexpected result may be local heterogeneity due to enhanced melt focussing at an ultraslow spreading ridge.
7. Tolstoy, M., et al. “Seismic character of volcanic activity at the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel Ridge.” Geology 29.12 (2001): 1139-1142. Never before has a volcanic eruption on a slow- or ultraslow- spreading mid-ocean ridge been both observed seismically and confirmed on the seafloor. During the first half of 1999, a long-lived volcanic-spreading event occurred on the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean. The seismicity associated with this event was unprecedented in duration and magnitude for a seafloor eruption. Sonar images from the U.S.S. Hawkbill, which passed over the area within four months of the start of activity, are consistent with the presence of a large, recently erupted flow and a volcanic peak directly in the area of seismic activity. Seismic activity began in mid-January and continued vigorously for three months; a reduced rate of activity persisted for an additional four months or more. In total, 252 events were large enough to be recorded on global seismic networks. Although a limited number of volcanic-spreading events have been observed globally, the duration and magnitude of the Gakkel Ridge swarm, when compared with volcanic seismicity at ridges spreading at intermediate and fast spreading rates, suggest that a negative power-law relationship may exist between these parameters and spreading rate. Fault activation, in response to magmatic emplacement, appears to have occurred over a broad region, suggesting that magma may have been tapped from mantle depths. The slow migration of the largest magnitude events along the axis of the rift valley suggests multiple magmatic pulses at depth. In combination with bathymetric setting and sidescan sonar confirmation, the seismic data for this event have provided a unique look at the scale and character of eruption processes at ultraslow-spreading rates.

RELATED POST#9: BIBIOGRAPHY ON ARCTIC GEOLOGICAL FEATURES: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/11/07/climate-change-threatens-polar-ice/

THE RELEVANT BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Fahnestock, Mark, et al. “High geothermal heat flow, basal melt, and the origin of rapid ice flow in central Greenland.” Science 294.5550 (2001): 2338-2342. Age-depth relations from internal layering reveal a large region of rapid basal melting in Greenland. Melt is localized at the onset of rapid ice flow in the large ice stream that drains north off the summit dome and other areas in the northeast quadrant of the ice sheet. Locally, high melt rates indicate geothermal fluxes 15 to 30 times continental background. The southern limit of melt coincides with magnetic anomalies and topography that suggest a volcanic origin.
2. Rezvanbehbahani, Soroush, et al. “Predicting the geothermal heat flux in Greenland: A machine learning approach.” Geophysical Research Letters 44.24 (2017): 12-271. Geothermal heat flux (GHF) is a crucial boundary condition for making accurate predictions of ice sheet mass loss, yet it is poorly known in Greenland due to inaccessibility of the bedrock. Here we use a machine learning algorithm on a large collection of relevant geologic features and global GHF measurements and produce a GHF map of Greenland that we argue is within ∼15% accuracy. The main features of our predicted GHF map include a large region with high GHF in central‐north Greenland surrounding the NorthGRIP ice core site, and hot spots in the Jakobshavn Isbræ catchment, upstream of Petermann Gletscher, and near the terminus of Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden glacier. Our model also captures the trajectory of Greenland movement over the Icelandic plume by predicting a stripe of elevated GHF in central‐east Greenland. Finally, we show that our model can produce substantially more accurate predictions if additional measurements of GHF in Greenland are provided. FULL TEXT: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL075661
3. van der Veen, Cornelis J., et al. “Subglacial topography and geothermal heat flux: Potential interactions with drainage of the Greenland ice sheet.” Geophysical research letters 34.12 (2007). Many of the outlet glaciers in Greenland overlie deep and narrow trenches cut into the bedrock. It is well known that pronounced topography intensifies the geothermal heat flux in deep valleys and attenuates this flux on mountains. Here we investigate the magnitude of this effect for two subglacial trenches in Greenland. Heat flux variations are estimated for idealized geometries using solutions for plane slopes derived by Lachenbruch (1968). It is found that for channels such as the one under Jakobshavn Isbræ, topographic effects may increase the local geothermal heat flux by as much as 100%.
4. Greve, Ralf. “Relation of measured basal temperatures and the spatial distribution of the geothermal heat flux for the Greenland ice sheet.” Annals of Glaciology 42 (2005): 424-432. The thermomechanical, three-dimensional ice-sheet model SICOPOLIS is applied to the Greenland ice sheet. Simulations over two glacial–interglacial cycles are carried out, driven by a climatic forcing interpolated between present conditions and Last Glacial Maximum anomalies. Based on the global heat-flow representation by Pollack and others (1993), we attempt to constrain the spatial pattern of the geothermal heat flux by comparing simulation results to direct measurements of basal temperatures at the GRIP, NorthGRIP, Camp Century and Dye 3 ice-core locations. The heat-flux map shows an increasing trend from west to east, a high-heat-flux anomaly around NorthGRIP with values up to 135 mWm–2 and a low-heat-flux anomaly around Dye 3 with values down to 20 mW m–2. Validation is provided by the generally good fit between observed and measured ice thicknesses. Residual discrepancies are most likely due to deficiencies of the input precipitation rate and further variability of the geothermal heat flux not captured here.
5. Smith‐Johnsen, Silje, et al. “Sensitivity of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream to geothermal heat.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 125.1 (2020): e2019JF005252. Recent observations of ice flow surface velocities have helped improve our understanding of basal processes on Greenland and Antarctica, though these processes still constitute some of the largest uncertainties driving ice flow change today. The Northeast Greenland Ice Stream is driven largely by basal sliding, believed to be related to subglacial hydrology and the availability of heat. Characterization of the uncertainties associated with Northeast Greenland Ice Stream is crucial for constraining Greenland’s potential contribution to sea level rise in the upcoming centuries. Here, we expand upon past work using the Ice Sheet System Model to quantify the uncertainties in models of the ice flow in the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream by perturbing the geothermal heat flux. Utilizing a subglacial hydrology model simulating sliding beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, we investigate the sensitivity of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream ice flow to various estimates of geothermal heat flux, and implications of basal heat flux uncertainties on modeling the hydrological processes beneath Greenland’s major ice stream. We find that the uncertainty due to sliding at the bed is 10 times greater than the uncertainty associated with internal ice viscosity. Geothermal heat flux dictates the size of the area of the subglacial drainage system and its efficiency. The uncertainty of ice discharge from the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream to the ocean due to uncertainties in the geothermal heat flux is estimated at 2.10 Gt/yr. This highlights the urgency in obtaining better constraints on the highly uncertain subglacial hydrology parameters.
6. Martos, Yasmina M., et al. “Geothermal heat flux reveals the Iceland hotspot track underneath Greenland.” Geophysical research letters 45.16 (2018): 8214-8222. Curie depths beneath Greenland are revealed by spectral analysis of data from the World Digital Magnetic Anomaly Map 2. A thermal model of the lithosphere then provides a corresponding geothermal heat flux map. This new map exhibits significantly higher frequency but lower amplitude variation than earlier heat flux maps and provides an important boundary condition for numerical ice‐sheet models and interpretation of borehole temperature profiles. In addition, it reveals new geologically significant features. Notably, we identify a prominent quasi‐linear elevated geothermal heat flux anomaly running northwest–southeast across Greenland. We interpret this feature to be the relic of the passage of the Iceland hotspot from 80 to 50 Ma. The expected partial melting of the lithosphere and magmatic underplating or intrusion into the lower crust is compatible with models of observed satellite gravity data and recent seismic observations. Our geological interpretation has implications for the geodynamic evolution of Greenland https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GL078289
7. Artemieva, Irina M. “Lithosphere thermal thickness and geothermal heat flux in Greenland from a new thermal isostasy method.” Earth-Science Reviews 188 (2019): 469-481. Lithosphere thermal structure in Greenland is poorly known and models based on seismic and magnetic data are inconsistent, while growing awareness in the fate of the ice sheet in Greenland requires reliable constraints on geothermal heat flux (GHF) from the Earth’s interior in the region where conventional heat flux measurements are nearly absent. The lithosphere structure of Greenland remains controversial, while its geological evolution is constrained by direct observations in the narrow ice-free zone along the coasts. The effect of the Iceland hotspot on the lithosphere structure is also debated. Here I describe a new thermal isostasy method which I use to calculate upper mantle temperature anomalies, lithosphere thickness, and GHF in Greenland from seismic data on the Moho depth, topography and ice thickness. To verify the model results, the predicted GHF values are compared to available measurements and show a good agreement. Thick (200–270 km) cratonic lithosphere of SW Greenland with GHF of ca. 40 mW/m² thins to 180–190 km towards central Greenland without a clear boundary between the Archean and Proterozoic blocks, and the deepest lithosphere keel is observed beneath the largest kimberlite province in West Greenland. The NW-SE belt with an anomalously thin (100–120 km) lithosphere and GHF of 60–70 mW/m² crosses north-central Greenland from coast to coast and it may mark the Iceland hotspot track. In East Greenland this anomalous belt merges with a strong GHF anomaly of >100 mW/m² in the Fjordland region. The anomaly is associated with a strong lithosphere thinning, possibly to the Moho, that requires advective heat transfer such as above active magma chambers, which would accelerate ice basal melting. The anomaly may extend 500 km inland with possibly a significant contribution of ice melt to the ice-drainage system of Greenland.
8. Greve, Ralf, and Kolumban Hutter. “Polythermal three-dimensional modelling of the Greenland ice sheet with varied geothermal heat flux.” Annals of Glaciology 21 (1995): 8-12. Computations over 50 000 years into steady state with Greve’s polythermal ice-sheet model and its numerical code are performed for the Greenland ice sheet with today’s climatological input (surface temperature and accumulation function) and three values of the geothermal heat flux: (42, 54.6, 29.4) mW m−2. It is shown that through the thermomechanical coupling the geometry as well as the thermal regime, in particular that close to the bed, respond surprisingly strongly to the basal thermal heat input. The most sensitive variable is the basal temperature field, but the maximum height of the summit also varies by more than ±100m. Furthermore, some intercomparison of the model outputs with the real ice sheet is carried out, showing that the model provides reasonable results for the ice-sheet geometry as well as for the englacial temperatures.

CONCLUSION: The attribution of observed polar ice melt events to anthropogenic global warming along with the proposal that such melt events can be attenuated by taking climate action and moving the global energy infrastructure away from fossil fuels to renewables, is not possible in light of the complex episodic and localized nature of these ice melt events and their locations restricted to known geologically active areas. The attribution to anthropogenic global warming requires an explanation of these anomalies. If polar ice melt were driven by global warming it would be more uniform and more of a trend and not isolated, episodic, and not restricted to known geologically active locations. Glacial and ice shelf melt events that are episodic and restricted to geologically active locations cannot be understood as the impacts of fossil fuel emissions that can be moderated or prevented by taking climate action. For that, significant additional evidence must be provided that relates the melt events to atmospheric temperature data. No such evidence has been provided in this study where, as in all such studies, an atmosphere bias in the research methodology assumes that ice melt can only be explained in terms of anthropogenic global warming. Such findings are more likely to be the product of confirmation bias than unbiased and objective scientific inquiry. 

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/08/03/confirmationbias/