Here are three brief extracts from the following NASA release:

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/greenland_recordhigh.html 

1) “…In fact, the amount of snow that has melted this year [2007] over Greenland could cover the surface size of the U.S. more than twice…”  [Repeat; in FACT….cover the U.S. more than twice]

2)  “…Marco Tedesco, a research scientist at the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, cooperatively managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, used satellite data to…” 

3)“…His [Tedesco’s] expertise in documenting melting trends produced other recent studies on increased snow melting over Greenland and the Antarctic…”

In the NASA link above, (Last Updated: November 30, 2007, Editor: Jason Townsend, NASA Official: Brian Dunbar), there is a truly ASTONISHING graph showing the Greenland Ice Sheet melting not in terms of millions of square kilometres, or giga-tonnes, or such familiar SCIENTIFIC units, but in the much more emotive units of “maps of the USA”!   (mainland).  For 2007 the melt index is given as about 2.3 USA’s, whereas for 1998 and 2002 it is about 3 (three) USA’s, and in 2005 about 2.9 USA’s   (And BTW, in other references, in 1987, twenty years ago, it was on a close par with the recent alarming record melt of 2002) 

However, Greenland is actually a lot smaller than the USA, so this dramatization is at best mistaken.  (The CIA Worldfact Book gives it at ~3 times the size of Texas) According to the data out there, the Greenland melting has reduced since 2002, which was typical of 1987, yet the hype is that recent melting is ever accelerating and scary.

The alarmist talk out there also fails to mention that instrumental records show that Greenland was warmer back in the early 1900’s.   (And, BTW, 1934 was the hottest year in the USA, not 1998, etc)

Why are we being misled?

Since the 80’s “Passive microwave satellite detection of wet ice sheet surfaces, has enabled the mapping of their surface melting. In Sept 2005, a release from CIRES (NOAA/Colorado U’ supported) predicted that 2005 through to end of “summer” (Octoberish), would show the highest melt level since the previous record year of 2002. However, that went all quiet when it turned out 2002 remained tops, with 1987, 1991, and 1998 on a level par, depending on source, see below: 

Link 1:  http://cires.colorado.edu/science/groups/steffen/greenland/melt2005/

More recently there has been a flurry of activity in the media, spurred on by a comment or two from James Hansen, (GISS), alleging recent alarming increase in the rate of melting, but most of it being in vague terms, with some saying double the rate and some triple, relative to something not elucidated.

One of the sources of this seems to be the following November 2007 release from NASA:

Link 2: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/greenland_recordhigh.html

Here is the Intro’ for that release:    “A new NASA-supported study reports that 2007 marked an overall rise in the melting trend over the entire [sic] Greenland ice sheet and, remarkably, melting in high-altitude areas was greater than ever at 150 percent more than average…”

This seems a very strange way of putting it….for instance in 2002; a declared record high; it was simply stated as the highest since 1991 ….simple! (Later, and similarly, 2005 became legend as higher than 2002, but the data says no!)

“Tragically” though, 2007 was a notably LOWER melt, than in seven major previous years over two prior decades, depending on source thus: {1987}, {1991}, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2004 and 2005; {for 1987 & 1991, see link1 graph}; for the other years, see link 2 graph.

In other words, the 2007 “alarming” recent melting, although more than that in 2006, was actually typical of 1987, twenty years ago!

Of course, the “disappointing” number for 2007 does not make exciting news, so rather than say it was a flop, they found that it was better to say it was higher than the average from 1988 to 2006.

(Why average from1988!? Uh? Maybe because there was a statistical “benefit” in choosing 1998 - 2006, i.e. 1987 was avoided as a high melt year and 2006 was a low melt year?…. very convenient!)

They also failed to mention that there was a well instrumented warmer period in Greenland, especially 1920-1930, that should be compared with today, concerning melt potential. However melt data in those warmer times is not available; find more at:

http://bobfj.greenoptions.com/

Funny business this; why don’t they talk straight to us mortals!