Dec. 10, 2007 The 2007 melt extent on the Greenland ice sheet
broke the 2005 summer melt record by 10 percent, making it the
largest ever recorded there since satellite measurements began
in 1979, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder
climate scientist. The melting increased by about 30 percent for
the western part of Greenland from 1979 to 2006, with record
melt years in 1987, 1991, 1998, 2002, 2005 and 2007, said CU-
Boulder Professor Konrad Steffen, director of the Cooperative
Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Air
temperatures on the Greenland ice sheet have increased by about
7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1991, primarily a result of the
build-up of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere, according to
scientists. Steffen gave a presentation on his research at the
fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union held in San
Francisco from Dec. 10 to Dec. 14. His team used data from the
Defense Meteorology Satellite Program's Special Sensor Microwave
Imager aboard several military and we