Any 21st century ice melt across Greenland cannot be due to an accelerated warming trend, as the island as a whole has been cooling since the 1990s.
New research analyzes two decades of Greenland land surface temperature (LST) data. Contrary to the popular narrative of a significant warming trend, Greenland has instead cooled from 2000-2019 at a rate of -0.055°C per decade.
Southern Greenland also cooled from 1958-2001, suggesting the region has been cooling for over 60 years.
Any recent ice melt in Greenland thus cannot be due to surface warming, as LSTs have undergone a cooling trend in both ice free and ice covered areas.
There are multiple possible explanations that do not require a warming climate:
1. Increased insolation due to decreased cloud cover.
2. An increase in warm water influx from the northernmost reaches of the Gulf Stream / North Atlantic Drift.
Geothermal activity – Greenland is not entirely geologically inactive, there are several known geothermal areas, including hot springs on Disko Island and in the southeast of Greenland proper. The tectonic / geothermal activity is not on the scale of Iceland or Western Antarctica, but it is possible there are more unknown sites underneath the icecap…
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