Alarming news on Greenland ice sheet

I was just preparing material for my trip to the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromso this coming weekend when a press release came in headlined “new melt record for Greenland ice sheet”.
A study sponsored by WWF Arctic, the US National Science Foundation and NASA has been examining surface temperature anomalies over the Greenland ice sheet surface and estimates of surface melting from satellite data, observations on the ground and models. Dr Marco Tedesco, Director of the CryosphereProcesses Laboratory at the City College of New York , is quoted as saying the past melt season was exceptional, “with melting in some areas stretching up to 50 days longer than average”. It seems melting in 2010 started exceptionally early – at the end of April – and ended quite late in mid-September, says Tedesco. Amongst the other results of an article just published by Tedesco and others in Environmental Research Letters are that summer temperatures were up to 3 degrees C above the average in 2010, combined with reduced snowfall. Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, “had the warmest spring and summer since records began in 1873”.
The study indicates that bare ice was exposed earlier than the average and longer than previous years.
“Bare ice is much darker than snow and absorbs more solar radiation”, says Tedesco. “This means the old ice is warming, melting, and running off into the sea”.
Melting of the Greenland ice sheet is expected to be a major contributor to projected sea level rises in the future.
WWF’s climate specialist Dr. Martin Sommerkorn said sea level rise was expected to top one metre by 2100, largely because of melting from ice sheets.
All of this does not surprise me. I am intrigued to hear what the Arctic specialists will have to report at the Arctic Frontiers meeting – and what the politicians attending the political part of the forum will have to say.