van der Wal et al. reveal that the ice movement in western Greenland over the past 17 years has … slowed significantly!

A recent article in the prestigious Science magazine has an alarming title that should thrill the greenhouse crusade: “Large and Rapid Melt-Induced Velocity Changes in the Ablation Zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet.” Holy cow – it’s just like Gore warned us. Throw the words ‘large,’ ‘rapid,’ ‘melt-induced velocity changes’ together in a title of an article in Science and expect to get some high-level media attention. However, once we dove into this article, we found an amazing twist given the threatening title, and we could not wait to feature the piece on World Climate Report….

Probably the largest surprise in the article can be seen in the Figure 3 in which we can see the velocity changes at many sites over the 17-year period. The authors note that “The overall picture obtained by averaging all stake measurements at all sites for individual years indicates a small but significant (r=0.79, P < 0.05) decrease of 10% in the annual average velocity over 17 years”. Despite all the talk about moulins, melting, rapid acceleration of ice, van der Wal et al. reveal that the ice movement in western Greenland over the past 17 years has … slowed significantly!

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In discussing their results we find some very interesting language, to say the least. At one place they write “it has been suggested that the interaction between meltwater production and ice velocity provides a positive feedback, leading to a more rapid and stronger response of the ice sheet to climate warming than hitherto assumed. Our results are not quite in line with this view.” At World Climate Report, we are far less polite, and instead of saying “our results are not quite in line with your view”, we tend to say “our results suggest you are wrong”!

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