Eric Holthaus at Slate got the exclusive from glaciologist Jason Box at the Dark Snow Project. The Dark Snow Project is a crowdfunded scientific study focusing on the causes and advancement of rapidly accumulating dark soot on Greenland glaciers. The Dark Snow Project wanted to release the findings from their summer Greenland data recovery before peer review due to the extraordinary important and timely information on Greenland glacier melting. I warn you to be prepared for the heartbreaking photos from the once beautiful Greenland landscape.
Greenland's summer ice sheet 2014
The implications of dark or black ice is frightening as the dark color decreases reflectivity and increases melting.
There are several potential explanations for what’s going on here. The most likely is that some combination of increasingly infrequent summer snowstorms, wind-blown dust, microbial activity, and forest fire soot led to this year’s exceptionally dark ice. A more ominous possibility is that what we’re seeing is the start of a cascading feedback loop tied to global warming. Box mentions this summer’s mysterious Siberian holes and offshore methane bubbles as evidence that the Arctic can quickly change in unpredictable ways.
This year, Greenland’s ice sheet was the darkest Box (or anyone else) has ever measured. Box gives the stunning stats: “In 2014 the ice sheet is precisely 5.6 percent darker, producing an additional absorption of energy equivalent with roughly twice the US annual electricity consumption.”
Perhaps coincidentally, 2014 will also be the year with the highest number of forest fires ever measured in Arctic.
I encourage you to click on the Slate
article for more photos and detail on The Dark Snow Project.