'Heat Dome' Linked to Greenland's Biggest Melt in 30 Years

[Uncle Joe]

8. 1889 is just a few years after Krakatoa exploded in Aug of 1883.

An 1889 melting event is probably a result of glaciers retreating after having advanced during a short period of global dimming as soot which had a cooling effect in the atmosphere gradually fell to the surface and warmed the glaciers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krackatoa

Krakatoa (Indonesian: Krakatau) was a volcanic island made of lava[2] in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. The name is used for the island group, the main island (also called Rakata), and the volcano as a whole. The volcano exploded in 1883, killing 36,417 people. The explosion is considered to be the loudest sound ever heard in modern history, with reports of it being heard nearly 3,000 miles (4,800 km) from its point of origin. The shock wave from the explosion was recorded on barographs around the globe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Particulates and soot

Global dimming, a gradual reduction in the amount of global direct irradiance at the Earth's surface, was observed from 1961 until at least 1990.[70] The main cause of this dimming is particulates produced by volcanoes and human made pollutants, which exerts a cooling effect by increasing the reflection of incoming sunlight. The effects of the products of fossil fuel combustion – CO2 and aerosols – have largely offset one another in recent decades, so that net warming has been due to the increase in non-CO2 greenhouse gases such as methane.[71] Radiative forcing due to particulates is temporally limited due to wet deposition which causes them to have an atmospheric lifetime of one week. Carbon dioxide has a lifetime of a century or more, and as such, changes in particulate concentrations will only delay climate changes due to carbon dioxide


(snip)

Soot may cool or warm the surface, depending on whether it is airborne or deposited. Atmospheric soot directly absorb solar radiation, which heats the atmosphere and cools the surface. In isolated areas with high soot production, such as rural India, as much as 50% of surface warming due to greenhouse gases may be masked by atmospheric brown clouds.[77] When deposited, especially on glaciers or on ice in arctic regions, the lower surface albedo can also directly heat the surface.[78] The influences of particulates, including black carbon, are most pronounced in the tropics and sub-tropics, particularly in Asia, while the effects of greenhouse gases are dominant in the extratropics and southern hemisphere