Greenland Ice Melt

Greenland is one of the most cartographically interesting landmasses on the planet. But while the following graphic is visually appealing, the story it exposes is altogether distressing:

The map shows that areas along the ice cap edge had more melting days in 2005 than the average back to 1988. It is based on satellite data which can detect the difference in reflected microwave emissions between wet and dry snow. More info at NASA’s Earth Observatory site here.

A friend of mine recently mentioned that he had just finished reading Barry Lopez’ brilliant Arctic Dreams which was originally published in 1986. What he realized afterwards was that the term “global warming” didn’t appear even once. Searching through the text on Amazon shows he was right. Nothing about global warming or the greenhouse effect was even a consideration. It’s a pretty stark indication of how quickly things have changed.