Global warming

[David Horn]

(08-04-2019, 12:46 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Comment: it is my suspicion that a significant reduction in the Arctic ice sheet will have effects upon climatic patterns in North America. I would expect cold air masses to stay farther north and become less severe. That also means that winter snow packs will be less permanent in the winter, and that more ground moisture will flow off before crops start growing.  

As you notice, as the ice sheet retreats, grasses start growing even at its edges, and those, much darker than the white ice, maintain much more of the solar heating. The Greenland ice sheet is fossil ice not in equilibrium with climatic conditions of the last few thousand years; should it vanish in whole or part, it will not return.

That may not be true.  The polar ice cap was a more stable heat source/sink than the open water that replaced it.  The new model may involve a wobbly northern jet stream, and produce many more outflows of polar cold in the winter, with warmer uptakes elsewhere in the Arctic.  If so, then the eastern US will be subject to more cold spells, and the western US to fewer.  Greenland melting only makes that even worse.