The article also states that this happens every 150 years or so and did so 150 years ago. Like winter comes every 12 months. Now it would be wonderful to understand the mechanism, we've only been watching via satellite for 30 years, so in another 150 years we'll have captured a full cycle on satellite and we will know a lot more. It would have been a much more reasonable article to say:
"For the first time NASA has captured a once in 150 year event on satellite images. ..." but you still might click the link but you wouldn't feel threatened.
Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average
It's not a 150 year cycle, it's a random event with a low probability. AKA 0.66% per year ~ 10 events per 1500 years but 3 of them could have fallen within 10 years of each other.
You've reading way to much into the "150 year cycle".
Core samples aren't accurate to the day so we really don't know if this exact event is what's happened in the past. What it really sounds like is that we know there are similar melting events that happen every century and a half or so. But unlike Winter coming every 12 months we have little idea why these events might occur or whether that's all there is and we can pack it in for another 120+ years.
So I get downvoted for saying that this kind of thing scares me. I clicked the link and read the article, if you read the article correctly yourself then you would realise that this isn't an event that happens precisely every 150 years. There's nothing stopping this event happening again next year... Ever heard the weather experts say something along the lines of, "This is a 75 year weather event" or "100 year weather event" it just means the odds of it happening again are slim, not impossible but slim.
The HN community has really deteriorated as of late. People down voting comments for no warranted reason, this site is starting to become Digg...
The article also states that this happens every 150 years or so and did so 150 years ago. Like winter comes every 12 months. Now it would be wonderful to understand the mechanism, we've only been watching via satellite for 30 years, so in another 150 years we'll have captured a full cycle on satellite and we will know a lot more. It would have been a much more reasonable article to say:
"For the first time NASA has captured a once in 150 year event on satellite images. ..." but you still might click the link but you wouldn't feel threatened.