Another sign of Greenland ice melting—icebergs are showing up 4 months early off Newfoundland

Something very weird is going on in the Arctic this winter. This past week we have seen satellite images of an apparent melt water pulse that exploded out of the Jakobshavn Glacier flushing sea ice from Disko and Uummannaq Bay. Tropical moisture from Hurricane Alex shrouded Greenland and Baffin Island causing significant ice melt this past weekend. Now, Robert Scribbler is reporting that ice bergs that normally arrive in Newfoundland in April, because they have been frozen in sea ice, have been spotted four months early off Bonavista Newfoundland in Canada.

Per Robert Scribbler:

During any normal year in the 20th Century, Newfoundland was a prime spot for viewing icebergs. Locked away in the sea ice for much of the Winter, these behemoths became liberated with the spring thaw. By April or May, they could at first be seen off the coast of Newfoundland as they made their trek out into the Atlantic Ocean along the currents running away from Baffin Bay and the West Coast of Greenland.

During a normal year, the sea ice begins its thaw in Baffin Bay along Greenland’s western coastal boundary by early to late April. A milder air flow along the northward progressing warm water current is enough to unlock some of the icebergs stranded within the sea ice and to send them cycling southward toward Newfoundland.

But this year, something odd and rather strange happened. During mid January, following a December in which Arctic sea ice extents were their fourth lowest on record, a period of unseasonable warmth settled in over Western Greenland. Warm, wet winds blew up over Greenland’s coastal mountain ranges and into Baffin Bay. These winds were ushered northward by both a very powerful North Atlantic storm track and by an anomalously warm termination of the Gulf Stream Current just south and east of Newfoundland.

And all this heat and tropical weather aimed at Greenland and Baffin Bay during January appears to have had a pretty far-ranging impact. For not only have melt monitors over the Greenland Ice Sheet picked up a Winter melt signal. Not only has Disko and Uummannaq Bay been flushed clear of sea ice during Winter. Now, just a few days later, we see the first iceberg of a four month early start to typical iceberg season for Newfoundland. Yet one more well out of season impact during a Winter that really isn’t like any Winter that could be considered normal — at least for what human beings or the living creatures of this world are used to.

This is adding to the significant news out of the Arctic. It’s a shame that our media keeps the country in the dark about all things climate change. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Animated map of January 12 through January 21, 2016 of the ice in Canadian waters.

Video below is not related to this story, but fascinating none the less.