Global warming

[pbrower2a]

(08-05-2019, 11:52 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-04-2019, 12:46 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Comment: it is my suspicion that a significant reduction in the Greenland 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.

A correction has been made. The Arctic has a thin layer of ice, and its permanence is going in doubt. That is a different issue altogether.

I would guess that the disappearance or even major shrinkage of the Greenland Ice Sheet would change the wind patterns  by weakening the now-permanent high pressure dome over Greenland and promote a more westerly flow of air in eastern Canada and the eastern United States, most markedly during the winter. Cold waves from the northwest that the Greenland High shunts into eastern North America would become rarer.

As for an open Arctic Ocean, once the ice buffer disappears, the Arctic Ocean would become much warmer in the summer and give surrounding lands in the Arctic basin decidedly warmer summers... but beyond that I can say little more.