Summit Surface Snow Temperatures of Greenland Kobashi, T.,
Kawamura, K., Severinghaus, J.P., Barnola, J.-M., Nakaegawa, T.,
Vinther, B.M., Johnsen, S.J. and Box, J.E. 2011. High
variability of Greenland surface temperature over the past 4000
years estimated from trapped air in an ice core. Geophysical
Research Letters 38: 10.1029/2011GL049444. In the report of the
study they designed to obtain this needed knowledge, Kobashi et
al. say they reconstructed "Greenland surface snow temperature
variability over the past 4000 years at the GISP2 site (near the
Summit of the Greenland ice sheet) with a new method that
utilizes argon and nitrogen isotopic ratios from occluded air
bubbles." In so doing, the eight researchers report that the
average Greenland snow temperature over the past 4000 years was
-30.7°C, while the current decadal (2001-2010) surface
temperature at the Greenland Summit is -29.9°C, which they say
is as warm as it was there in the 1930s-1940s. And they add that
"there was another similarly warm per