Melting in Greenland set a new record before the end of the melting season. Over the past days, the cumulative melting index over the entire Greenland ice sheet (defined as the number of days when melting occurs times the area subject to melting) on August 8th exceeded the record value recently set in 2010 for the whole melting season (which usually ends around the beginning or mid September).
Standardized melting index (SMI) for the period 1979 - 2012. the years between 1979 and 2011 use the full length season (May through September) where 2012 uses only the available period May through August 8th. Note that 2012 value is much higher than any of the previous years, despite the shorter period.
The plot below shows the passive microwave brightness temperature time series over Summit recorded between 1979 and 2011 (the ensemble of gray lines) and the time series recorded during 2012 (black thick line). The ensemble clearly shows that things are relatively stable at Summit, with relatively small interannual variability.
Map of annual melting indeces from satellite microwave data for the period 1979 - 2011
The image on the left shows a different way to visualize the melting index obtained from spaceborne microwave remote sensing data. The size of the fonts for each year is proportional to the rank of the year in terms of melting index (e.g., the bigger the font the stronger the melting). Colors complement the size of the fonts and indicate by how many standard deviations that particular year was above (red color) or below (blue color) the average. Note that the color scale is not linear. Feel free to use the image for presentations, talks or anything that might be helpful to you. I would appreciate to be contacted to know where the image has been used for. High-resolution version is available upon request. In any case, please credit M. Tedesco.
