South Cascade Glacier - Gone in a century?

[Lowell_Skoog]

Today's Wenatchee World has an article about the South Cascade Glacier. Scientists are saying that the glacier is melting so fast that it may be gone in a century. The glacier is one of the few in the world that is currently being studied.

 

Unfortunately, I don't have any more information than that, because on-line access to the Wenatchee World requires a subscription: http://www.wenworld.com

 

If anybody out there has access to this article on-line, would you mind sending me a copy by private message? Otherwise, I'll look for it the next time I visit the U.W. library. (The information above was from a blurb on KUOW radio.)

 

FWIW, here is a before-and-after shot of the glacier from my webstory about the Ptarmigan Traverse:

 

http://www.alpenglow.org/climbing/ptarmigan-1953/s-cascade-1953-2003.html

[graupel]

South Cascade Glacier, under study, could melt away completely

837 words

12 September 2004

14:59

Associated Press Newswires

English

© 2004. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

 

LEAVENWORTH, Wash. (AP) - The South Cascade Glacier has been shrinking at such a rapid pace in the last three decades that scientists predict it could melt away completely within a century.

 

South Cascade is one of only a few ice fields in the world being studied for longterm effects of climate changes, The Wenatchee World reported Sunday.

 

Scientists have been studying it since 1959 in order to better understand connections between glaciers and global warming, weather and water supply, nature and humans.

 

The glacier is located at the head of the Cascade River, which drains into the Skagit River and Puget Sound.

 

Glaciers make up three-quarters of the "permanent" ice in the lower 48 states, and drain into area rivers to provide water for people, fish, industry and recreation.

 

Nearly all of the state's 700 glaciers are receding rapidly, and many have disappeared in the past few decades.

 

Since 1983, students from Nichols College in Dudley, Mass., have been studying glaciers in the North Cascades, nearly all of which drain into the Columbia River system. To the west, near Mount Stuart, the college recorded 15 glaciers in 1969. Now there are 12, four of them dwindling rapidly.

 

Deprived of sufficient snowfall and melted by warming temperatures, the receding glaciers could one day mean less fresh water for river systems.

 

"The whole way we manage water may one day have to change," said Mark Savoca, chief of physical hydrology for the U.S. Geological Survey's Washington Water Science Center in Tacoma, which monitors the South Cascade Glacier.

 

"Instead of ice and snow being a natural storage system for the gradual release of water during the middle to late summer, we may have to manage storage using a different system altogether."

 

Seasonal snowmelt and ground water runoff contribute in the spring and early summer, but the systems are fed almost entirely by glaciers in the late summer and fall, said Bill Bidlake, a USGS hydrologist studying the South Cascade Glacier.

 

In Eastern Washington, the glaciers provide critical water during the dry months.

 

"If these glaciers continue to decrease in size, and if some disappear altogether, it's going to have a significant impact on the mountain ecosystems as we know them," Bidlake said.

 

The South Cascade Glacier is ideal for study because it melts completely into one river basin, so scientists can more easily gauge how much of it melts away each summer, Savoca said.

 

The glacier has been alternately advancing and shrinking since the last Ice Age, he said. Since its last major advance in the late 1500s, the glacier has retreated more than three-quarters of a mile. About a third of that retreat -- about one-third of a mile -- has occurred since 1959.

 

"We are concerned that the rate of decrease in the glacial size and mass seems to have gotten a lot more rapid in the last 25 to 30 years," Savoca said.

 

Scientists visit the remote site in the Glacier Peak Wilderness about six times a year, measuring winter snowfall and summer melt, ice thickness and water quantity, and collecting weather readings.

 

Research suggests the glacier made a significant advance starting around 3,000 B.C. Then in the late 16th century, it began to retreat. A smaller advance ended in the late 19th century, and it has been retreating ever since.

 

Rsearch shows it has "been much larger than it is now," Savoca said. "It's questionable whether it's ever been smaller."

 

Similar retreats are being noted at ice fields around the world.

 

That "tells us that the climate is too warm and dry to sustain them," Bidlake said.

 

Some experts believe that industry and the burning of fossil fuels are contributing to the problem. In the past century, some glaciers and ice shelves have melted completely.

 

But Savoca said scientists really don't know how much, if any, of the melting is caused by humans and how much by natural climate fluctuations.

 

"If there is a human cause, it's has only been a recent one," he said. "There are thousands and thousands of years before that where glacial receding was caused by something else."

 

Researchers are starting to see a natural consequence of the shrinking South Cascade Glacier: less spring runoff in the Cascade River.

 

Runoff corresponds directly to the size of a glacier, Savoca said. If a glacier loses half its mass, the river would likely lose half its runoff. Water may need to be collected and stored earlier in the spring and summer, he said.

 

People will likely adapt to the shrinking of glaciers by changing the way they use water, Savoca said.

 

"For me, the idea of not being able to put on crampons and climb around on the snow and ice, the prospect that future generations might not have that chance, is very sad," he said. "For some people it won't really matter."

 

------

 

Information from: The Wenatchee World, http://www.wenworld.com

[Lowell_Skoog]

"For me, the idea of not being able to put on crampons and climb around on the snow and ice, the prospect that future generations might not have that chance, is very sad," he said. "For some people it won't really matter."

 

As I said in this recent thread, weep for the glaciers:

 

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/388009/page/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1

 

Here is another old thread about glacier recession:

 

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/threadz/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/224062/Main/224062#Post224062

[Juan]

So true. Good articles. Thanks for this stuff Lowell.

 

John

[jmace]

But Savoca said scientists really don't know how much, if any, of the melting is caused by humans and how much by natural climate fluctuations.

 

"If there is a human cause, it's has only been a recent one," he said. "There are thousands and thousands of years before that where glacial receding was caused by something else."

 

Climate is very interesting, just like the oceans we are very far away from a complete undeterstanding.

 

Thanks for the article Lowell I love this stuff

 

Jesse

[j_b]

for a dramatic photo comparison of cascade glacier between 1928 and 2000, go here: http://www-nsidc.colorado.edu/sotc/glacier_balance.html

 

note the change in terminus location but also the massive surface drawdown (compare the elevations at which the ice meets the rock on the sides).

 

also check out the global mass balance curve further down the page and the noticeable acceleration in melting over the last decade on record.

 

as for savoca's comment: even though a glacier mass balance scientist may not be able to say that increase in glacier melt at a specific glacier results from greenhouse gas emissions (his data only speak to changes in mass balance), the scientists who are aware of variations in solar activity, earth albedo and greenhouse gas concentrations do think that only anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases can explain much of the increase in global temperature that occurred during the last century and especially over the last 50years. we also know that temperature is often the main driver for the mass balance of many glacial systems.

[philfort]

Death of the Whitechuck Glacier (or one of its two lobes):

http://www.nichols.edu/departments/glacier/deathglacier.htm

 

In 2002, the northern branch of the glacier was entirely gone (Figure 10). Instead of an ice filled valley extending 1.6 km from the lake to Glacier Gap at the former head of the glacier, there was a boulder-filled basin.

 

[Alex]

Seattle Times ran this same article.

[Lowell_Skoog]

Seattle Times ran this same article.

 

Thanks Alex. It looks like the A.P. published an extract of the original Wenatchee World article (which appeared on Sunday) and many outlets (like KUOW and the Seattle Times) picked it up. I'd still like to read the original article, so I'm planning to look for it at the U.W. library.

[Freeman]

Lowell, PM me your snail mail address and I'll send it to you. Ironically I had given the author your name as someone to contact about writing this article

 

Freeman

[Lowell_Skoog]

I asked a friend of mine, who knows more about it than I do, whether there is a serious scientific debate about human influence on global warming. He said, in short, that there is not. And he recommended the following book:

 

BOILING POINT: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis--and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster, by Ross Gelbspan, Basic Books, NY, 2004

 

I bought a copy of this book last night and read the first chapter. It looks like a worthwhile read to me, and it conforms with my gut instinct, which is that Americans are being misled on this issue by the fossil fuel industry and its shills. It also argues that addressing the climate crisis could improve a host of other problems, from economic development to terrorism. This too I believe in my gut.

 

The first chapter, "Not Just Another Issue," sets the stage, noting that in 1995 the world community of climate scientists first declared that they had detected the "human influence" on climate. The author continues:

 

In 2001, the issue was infused with a jolt of urgency. That January, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that the climate is changing far more rapidly than scientists had previously projected.

 

More than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries, participating in the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history, reported to the UN that brutal droughts, floods, and violent storms across the planet will intensify because emissions from humanity's burning of coal and oil is driving up temperatures much more rapidly than scientists had anticipated just six years earlier.

 

"The most comprehensive study on the subject indicates that Earth's average temperature could rise by as much as 10.4 degrees over the next 100 years--the most rapid change in 10 millennia and more than 60 percent higher than the same group predicted less than six years ago," according to the Washington Post.

 

One thing I've learned in my years of Cascade climbing is that the trend in the forecast--whether it is getting more optimistic or more pessimistic with each update--is often a better indicator of what the future will bring than the forecast itself. If you're planning a big climb next weekend, and every day the forecast looks worse than the last, it's time to start making different plans. The quote above suggests to me that the same thing may be happening on a global scale.

 

Here's what the author has to say about the rest of his book. I haven't read it yet, but I suggest that Juan and others who are interested in this subject give it a look.

 

The coming chapters of this book will focus less on the science of global warming and more on its dimensions in our social and political lives.

 

Chapter 2, "The Sum of All Clues," is a capsule version of the most important responses of the world's community of climate scientists to the central question underlying the climate crisis: How do we know this upheaval is caused by human beings rather than resulting from the wild natural swings that have marked the prehistoric record of the global climate?

 

Chapter 3, "Criminals Against Humanity," documents an extraordinary collaboration between the fossil fuel industry and the White House to keep this issue out of public view in the United States--and to keep the debate focused on whether it is happening rather than on what to do about it.

 

Chapter 4, "Bad Press," examines, from another angle, the reason the American public is so ill-informed about climate change compared to the rest of the world. Part of the answer lies in some outdated journalistic conventions that were adopted to ensure objectivity but which, in fact, have generated frequently inaccurate and, in some cases, grossly distorted portraits of the state of our scientific knowledge of what is happening to the planet.

 

Chapter 5, "Three Fronts of the Climate War," details divisions on the climate crisis: between the United States and much of the rest of the world, between Washington and much of the rest of the country, and within the oil, auto, and insurance industries.

 

Chapter 6, "Compromised Activists," examines the first, groping attempts of the world to deal with climate change--and the extraordinary frustration of thousands of political, religious, and campus-based climate activists who find themselves forced by a steel wall of denial to lower their expectations and pursue only the most minimal goals.

 

Chapter 7, "Thinking Big: Three Beginnings," portrays (I hope as honestly and sympathetically as possible) three large-scale proposals that, while flawed in this author's eye, stand out for their intellectual courage in trying to address the true scope and scale of the challenge.

 

Chapter 8, "Rx for a Planetary Fever," details my own preferred proposal--a set of three interactive global-scale policy strategies, which are designed to address the climate crisis but which could also generate many other positive changes in our social, political, and economic lives.

 

Interspersed between the chapters are snapshots of warming-driven impacts on the systems of the planet.

[mattp]

I was talking to an atmospheric scientist who said, last week, that about 95% of those who are actually knowledgeable about the issues agree that human-induced global warming is real. He pointed out that there remain those 5% who say we don't have conclusive proof, and this is why the industry shills, as you call them, are able to play their trumpets so loudly and why they can get away with it.

 

My "source" is not an expert on global warming, but he's involved in a closely related field and is certainly one who I would expect to have an informed opinion on this issue.

[Ducknut]

You can express your opinion about this 7 weeks from today. And live with the results for the rest of our time here.

[ski_photomatt]

I'm a Ph.D. student at UW and have spent much of the last 4 years learning everything I can about global climate. I'm less than a year from finishing my degree. I don't consider myself an expert, yet, but I am surrounded by them. I talk to them every day. I've gone to conferences with them, listened to their talks, given talks of my own. I've read more technical, peer reviewed journal articles than I care to remember.

 

In short, Lowell and mattp are right. Within the scientific community, the vast majority of people, myself included, believe global warming is real, and that humans are the cause. We still discuss it among ourselves, about how much warming will occur, about how it will be distributed around the globe, about how that will affect inter-annual variability, about the exact mechanisms, feedbacks, and all the rest, but few disagree about the basic premise.

 

Every time this topic comes up, I recommend to those who are interested in learning more to read the IPCC reports. The last one was issued in 2001. These are internationally peer-reviewed syntheses of the breadth of knowledge regarding climate change. There are three parts:

 

Part I addresses "The Scientific Basis" - is the climate changing? Are humans responsible? How do we know for sure? How will it change in the future? How has it changed in the past?

 

Part II addresses "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" - what will the impacts of climate change be? How can we adapt? What natural and human systems are the most vulnerable?

 

Part III addresses "Mitigation" - what can be done to mitigate climate change?

 

Two reports were issued for each part, a Summary for Policymakers (SPM) and a Technical Summary (TS). The SPMs are written for non-scientists; each is about 20 pages long. The TS are longer. You can find them at http://www.ipcc.ch

[Bogen]

What happens in 7 weeks?

Lowell, I don't think that the average person doubts anthropogenic climate change.

I even think most people care enough to ask their neighbors to change their behaviour

Here's an interesting question for the forum. What would you be willing to give up to slow global warming?

Suzuki figures that one of the largest economic forces behind excess energy consumption is our penchant for international products. That is to say that by the time you buy those 25 dollar jeans made in china from cotton that came from pakistan and colored with dye from malaysia, they've been shipped round the world a couple times,with the ensuant pollution. I have been trying lately to buy locally made products even where they are more expensive. I find it very hard to make a committment to this behaviour - it is hard enough to find quality products at a reasonable price without this complication. Suzuki says that if everyone in north America changed their spending habits in this fashion, we could drastically lower global pollution. So, stop eating bananas and eat only locally grown fruit, or buy gear from a local manufacturer even if it is not quite what you want (by the way, what are the local manufacturers?) What would or have the rest of you done or tried to do without for the sake of pollution reduction?

[Squid]

Thanks for the link, photomatt.

[Ducknut]

What happens in 7 weeks?

 

The Presidential Election. Maybe you haven't heard about it yet.

[Mal_Con]

I know locally that the lower Lynch Glacier and the lower Hinman Glacier have totally disappeared. In the 80's there were icebergs floating in Peasoup Lake this summer just a round muddy blue lake. The ice caves on the Puyallap Glacier along with the Glacier are gone. Kilimanjaro is about to lose its ice it all seems to beyond question at this point.

[Bogen]

What happens in 7 weeks?

 

The Presidential Election. Maybe you haven't heard about it yet.

 

Oh, yeah, I heard aboot it. I guess it's just not important to me, eh.

[j_b]

Cumulative mass balances for eight of the glaciers in the data set show a general decline through the record, 1984-2003.

 

including lynch glacier

[JayB]

I don't think there's any real scientific debate about the connection between increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and increasing global temperatures. However, there also no real debate about the fact that there are clearly other factors - none of which humans have any control over - that also play a critical role in regulating climate change. Moreover, no scientist that I am aware of would contend that we understand all of the factors that influence climate change, much less their interaction.

 

In light of these facts, and the reality that viable alternatives to fossil fuels are not availabe yet, it seems like it would be prudent to focus on modest, attainable lifestyle changes that appeal to the average person's self interest first, like turning off lights, buying energy efficient appliances, going a bit easier on the heater in the summer and the AC in the winter, sealing windows and doors, making it easier for people to bike to work, improving mass transit, using monetary incentives to encourage recycling, etc, etc, etc. None of this is sexy or new - most of this stuff has been around since the oil embargo in the 70's - bit it's a hell of a lot more effective than the usual enviromarxist critiques of capitalism and its concommitant demands for massive changes in human behavior and social structure and/or dark rumblings about the corporate state, etc, etc, etc. Incorporating realism and attainability into the agenda have never set-back any political movement that I am aware of.

 

While we are weeping for the glaciers, let us tip a 40 of OE for the massive ice sheets that once cloaked a significant portion of the North American Continent, and have a moment of silence for all of Colorado's once' proud glaciers, the only trace of which that remains is the pitiful scrap near St. Mary's.

[j_b]

odd how you left vehicle fuel economy standards out of your list ... or is it that noting the refusal of this administration to raise fuel economy standards amounts to enviromarxism as well?

[Bushwhacker]

It's funny how folks jump to conclusions on things so quickly (ie Global Warming). We could study "global warming" for 10,000 solid years and still not have a reliable grasp on what is causing Earth's climatic fluctuations. The Earth has been around for Billions of years. One BILLION is a thousand million. One million is a thousand thousand. Do we really think we've got ANY kind of answers after a mere 40 years of studies? Those who claim to have any kind of answers about what factors are causing this particular climatic fluctuation (one of many THOUSAND fluctuation cycles that this Earth has undergone in its long history) are only fooling themselves.

 

Why weep for the glaciers? Weep because it affects route selection and beauty at certain times of year, not because we humans are having a negative impact on them .. because there's certainly not sufficient proof to substantiate that claim.

[Jim]

I don't think there's any real scientific debate about the connection between increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and increasing global temperatures.

 

Gotta love the internet where everyone is an expert.

[Geek_the_Greek]

My goodness, Bushwacker, you're right. In fact, even we humans have been around evolving and fluctuating for about one MILLION years. That's a thousand thousand. So considering that each of us is only around for a century or so, it's obvious that we can never know anything about humans either.

 

Obviously, the only solution to finding happiness is prayer. All together now, let's "pray for our great nation".