What am I talking about? The Jacobshavn glacier on the west coast of Greenland is contributing a bit less to Greenland ice loss, growing a bit thicker and even advancing a bit.
Why is the glacier thickening/advancing a bit? Bit of a puzzler for the scientists who noticed this:
a team of scientists from the United States and the Netherlands found that the glacier is likely growing due to colder ocean currents. In 2016, a current that passes by Jakobshavn Glacier was cooler than usual, making waters near the glacier the coldest they'd been since the mid-1980s.
This cooler current came from the North Atlantic Ocean, more than 600 miles (966 kilometers) south of the glacier, according to data from NASA's Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission and other observations.
So—why did this cooling current happen? Warm currents melted the sea ice shelves around Greenland, causing the glaciers on Greenland to slide faster into the sea.
It appears that the cold water is the result of a climate pattern known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which makes the northern Atlantic Ocean slowly switch between warm and cold water about once every 20 years, the researchers said. The cold phase just recently started, and has cooled the Atlantic Ocean in general, they said. In addition, some extra cooling of the waters around Greenland's southwest coast helped keep the glacier chilly.
But this crisp change won't last forever. Once the NAO climate pattern flips back, the Jakobshavn will likely start melting faster and thinning again, the researchers said.
"Jakobshavn is getting a temporary break from this climate pattern," Josh Willis, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the principal investigator of OMG, said in the statement. "But in the long run, the oceans are warming. And seeing the oceans have such a huge impact on the glaciers is bad news for Greenland's ice sheet."
A change in an oceanic oscillation does not cause global heating or cooling—it just moves heat around so parts will be hotter than usual.
https://www.livescience.com/65080-greenland-glacier-growing.html
NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/cold-water-currently-slowing-fastest-greenland-glacier
The weather record is very noisy, blips and flips aplenty. As I said, this is not a sign of global cooling, other parts of the Atlantic will now be warmer than before.
