Glaciers

[Peter_Puget]

Is this somewhere else?

[plexus]

After the big Glacier National Park hub-bub, I'm surprised nobody did an article like this sooner. For the past four years I've been reading comments here about how much thinner/smaller/broken up the glaciers are during summertime TRs.

[chris]

Anyone who can read the guidebooks knows something is up. Two recent examples for me were Boston Basin and Mt. Triumph. In the Select, the Forbidden South Face Glacier easily covers the bowl - this September we only had to cross 30' of ice to reach the left side of the chute. And the glacier in the SE aspect of Torment was originally mapped in the 1960's as covering the entire bowl from W-E, and perhaps 50% of the bowl South. Now its seperated into two lobes, has easily lost half of its mass, and the E lobe has turned into a permanent icefield.

On Mt. Triumph, the Select guide says to simply walk across the glacier. But the glacier has retreated to much that its less work to simple walk the slabs underneath it. And the glacier underneath the North Aspect is GONE. Completely gone, just a few pieces of ice standing like beach icebergs.

Another cc.commie mentioned to me that for this latitude a glacier needed to be at least 40% above the firn line to remain stable, and that less than one quarter of the glaciers in the Cascades meet that requirement (am I quoting you correctly?).

[chrisn]

Unfortunately articles like this really just preach to the choir. Very few people actually see first hand what is going on in the mountains much less realize how the loss of glacial ice could effect them long term.

[Fairweather]

From the article:"On the north side of Mount Olympus, in the Olympic Mountains, the depth of ice on the Blue Glacier has dropped an average of 65 feet annually since 1987, according to estimates by University of Washington researchers."

 

Huh? I climbed Olympus last year for the first time since 1984. I did notice the lower glacier seems to have dropped a bit, but the depth of ice near the base of the icefall is/was over 1100 feet! Let's see; at 65 feet per year since '87....that's over 1200 feet of depth supposedly lost! Obviously a misquote, but when you're writing a story like this, details DO matter.

 

That picture of the South Cascade Glacier is absolutely shocking.

[Mike_Gauthier]

The article is a bit misleading. As I have understood the study being discussed in the story (regarding the Rainier employees) the stakes are used to measure the annual snowfall and its rate of melt, not the thickness or size of the glacier. The story doesn’t really make that connection. The 41 foot drop in one year means that 41 feet of winter snowfall melted in that area.

 

Having helped w/ the study, I recall placing stakes in the spring (when the snow depth is highest) and then monitoring the rate at which the snow melts throughout the spring/summer/fall. They use a steam drill to create a hole in the snow where they can then place the plastic PVC pole. They drill until they hit the ice or rock on top of the dry glacier below. They don’t really drill into the permanent ice (or they to avoid doing this if possible.) After the PVC pole is measured every few weeks, and thus you know how much and how fast the snowpack is melting (and how much was deposited). The stakes are placed at various locations and altitudes around the mountain (some climbers have seen them on the Emmons) to get varying rates of accumulation and melt. 41 feet was probably one of the higher accumulation and melting areas.

 

That said; I still believe that the snowpack and snowfields at various locations around the peak are retreating. But my info is less scientific, and more anecdotal. The News Tribune recently did a similar story, so this is hardly the first to explore the topic.

 

As an aside, I also noticed a crevasse forming on the summit this summer, Columbia Crest that is. Hey FW, have you seen that before? Anyone else notice the summit crevasse this year, or in years passed?

[Fairweather]

I haven't been up to the top recently. I am fascinated by the surge activity going on above the southeast rim of Sunset Ampitheatre. The Tahoma Icecap now has an active finger that connects the upper South Mowich to the summit snows. Have you noticed? Anyone climb it yet? I suspect it will disappear in the next couple of years.

[fern]

Huh? I climbed Olympus last year for the first time since 1984. I did notice the lower glacier seems to have dropped a bit, but the depth of ice near the base of the icefall is/was over 1100 feet! Let's see; at 65 feet per year since '87....that's over 1200 feet of depth supposedly lost! Obviously a misquote, but when you're writing a story like this, details DO matter.

 

65 feet on average over the whole glacier surface. If the terminus of cross-section Y times Z retreats back X feet then there is a loss of XYZ cubic feet of ice. Divide XYZ by the total area of the glacier (typically just the planar area measured from a map or sat photo) and you get the average depth lost. It's not necessarily a true depth lost at any given point in the glacier.

 

or maybe it is a misquote/interpretation by the writer ... dunno

[Fairweather]

"the depth of ice on the Blue Glacier has dropped an average of 65 feet annually since 1987"

 

I still don't think this fits your explanation. 65x19(yrs)= 1235 feet of overall depth. Even if your explanation is valid, the conveyance in a lay publication is improper.

[bwrts]

One thing that the media fails to portray is the fact that the increase in earth's temp is a natural cycle which has taken place long before the first combustion engine puffed out CO and other earthwarming gasses. Climatic records only go so far back in human history yet glaciers have been retreating and advancing for longer. This has been displayed in numerous world locations in the geologic record. Sure we are helping the process but how much did a dinosaur fart contribute in comparison? Regardless, the fact remains true, glaciers are shrinking faster now then any other recorded modern time. The big issue is not the loss of ice mass but really the issues of raising global ocean levels, more frequent severe weather and ultimately exponential growth of human populations (yes unrelated to the glaciers, but won't the population increase speed up the problems even more?). I wonder what other countries are doing in prepartation...

[goatboy]

If you haven't seen "An Inconvenient Truth," I recommend it.

 

Gore addresses this point of yours, and many others, showing evidence that correlate CO2 output and corresponding temps. The website is at THIS PAGE

 

"The evidence is overwhelming and undeniable."

[bwrts]

Thinking about this movie...If mr Gore was really serious he would make this a free movie and also promote this to all the schools with free showings and ultimately, not make his money back.

The big wheel of human consumption is still being turned....no matter what mr Gore has to say.

 

What are we going to do, live in caves and watch it rain away the glaciers? Hell no, I doubt PCs will work very well with silicacious rocks...and no STARBUCKS!

course, then we would be forced into using EBs and hemp goldlines, right mr RuMR..!?

[fern]

"the depth of ice on the Blue Glacier has dropped an average of 65 feet annually since 1987"

 

I still don't think this fits your explanation. 65x19(yrs)= 1235 feet of overall depth. Even if your explanation is valid, the conveyance in a lay publication is improper.

 

I think you are probably right. The point I was making was that when the terminus retreats by some amount you get 100% loss of ice thickness in that area, if you take that lost volume and distribute it as an average over the whole area you can get a number that is much bigger than any point loss of depth well upstream in the glacier. But even taking that approach 65' per year would require a whole lot of terminal retreat too.

 

the World Glacier Monitoring Service has published global glacier mass balance numbers for 1990-2000 (Blue Glacier is in there) in PDF format if you want numbers unfiltered by journalistic misunderstanding. http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/mbb.html

[goatboy]

Thinking about this movie...If mr Gore was really serious he would make this a free movie and also promote this to all the schools with free showings and ultimately, not make his money back.

The big wheel of human consumption is still being turned....no matter what mr Gore has to say.

 

My understanding of Gore's use of profits from the movie is to use that money to train others globally to deliver the slideshow on which it is based and to foster more widespread delivery of the global message.

 

I'm wondering if you have any ill-informed, cynical, or self-righteous comments to make about that fact, bwrts?

[RideT61]

For all those people who have opinions on this topic of global warming without ever having read an acedemic paper relating to the issue this would be a good place to start informing yourself.

www.realclimate.org

[Stella]

What I think is really cool about BWRTS' post is that it is almost a perfect regurgitation of the Bush party line on climate change, and the one constantly reiterated on Fox News, etc. Despite the fact that there are no peer-reviewed articles substantiating this position (i.e. this is a normal process and we just can't understand it because our records don't go back that far), and near-universal scientific consensus to the contrary, the Bushies still spout this crap. What's so cool is that bwrts' response shows how effective propaganda is: if you say something often enough, even if it is demonstrably false, people will believe you.

 

Props to Rove and Rupert Murdoch! Goebbels would be proud.

[catbirdseat]

It's not clear whether or not Ben is taking the Bush position that "there is nothing we can do about Global Warming, so we should do nothing". What's interesting about the Bushies is that sometimes they seem to take the position that Global Warming isn't happening so we shouldn't worry about it. Other times they seem to be saying that, well, yes, it is happening, but there isn't really anything we can do about it without completely ruining our economy.

[JayB]

Who is the one doing the oversimplfying here? There was no variation in the climate before the industrial age? Even within the consensus view in which the position that CO2 emissions are contributing to an increasing global temperature has been established beyond all dispute, there still seems to be room to discuss how much of the change is due to higher C02 levels and how much is due to the natural variation of the Earths climate. Even people who are in complete agreement about these things will probably still have different ideas about the optimal policy response to them. There's quite a bit of room for discussion between doing nothing on one hand, and pretending that we can return to some kind of pre-industrial paleo-eden on the other.

[Dechristo]

The current administration's policy on global warming is justified in that there is new speculation of a genetic similarity in glaciers and terrorists.

[tvashtarkatena]

One thing that the media fails to portray is the fact that the increase in earth's temp is a natural cycle which has taken place long before the first combustion engine puffed out CO and other earthwarming gasses. Climatic records only go so far back in human history

 

I'll address these two common misconceptions specifically.

 

The earth as three natural, cyclic pertebations in its motion, with periods varying from 25K years to 125K years, that are highly correlated with global climate change in the form of ice ages. The earth's axis precesses, wobbles, and its orbital ellipse changes. According to these cycles, the earth should be rapidly COOLING; we should be entering an ice age. Clearly, we are not...because of us.

 

About 5000 years ago humans began reversing this trend by releasing two greenhouse gases: methane (from rotting vegetation in rice cultivation, which began at that time), and CO2 from burning wood and deforestation (which reduces the carbon sequestration from the atmosphere). Since the industrial revolution human caused greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion spiked. Fossil fuel emissions have a unique isotopic signature (they product carbon with a much lower content of carbon 14 due to their greater age), so there is absolutely no ambiguity as to where all this atmospheric carbon is coming from. It is coming from us.

 

The second misconception is that we've only been taking data as long as we've had weathervanes. Actually, we have well over a hundred thousand years of data spanning over several ice ages from trapped air bubbles in Arctic and Antarctic ice caps. That same data was used to correlate the aformentioned pertebations in the earths motion to timing of past ice ages. From this enormous body of data we know that global temperatures are highly correlated with greenhouse gas concentrations, and we also know that we are rapidly entering a period of unprecedented greenhouse gas concentration. More disturbingly, we've observed several periods of rapid climate change (10 degrees in a decade) in distant the past. It could happen again just as suddenly.

[catbirdseat]

There's quite a bit of room for discussion between doing nothing on one hand, and pretending that we can return to some kind of pre-industrial paleo-eden on the other.

I agree, but our current administration seems to lean a lot more heavily to the "do nothing" view than "paleo-eden". If you are a true economic scientist, AND you believe that our CO2 emissions are causing global warming, then you would agree with the following:

 

(1) Global warming will cost us money in the form of lost land, lost farm productivity, displacements of population centers, etc.

 

(2) Reducing CO2 emissions costs money. Spending money to reduce CO2 is partially offset by cost savings from decreased energy costs and health benefits (to the extent that toxics are reduced).

 

(3) There is some optimum amount of money that we should be spending on CO2 reductions to maximize our long term economic welfare.

 

If you believe those three statements, then it comes down to: A) who spends the money, and B) what is the right amount to "invest" in CO2 reduction. The problem of course is the old "tragedy of the commons". Everyone would benefit from CO2 reduction, but they would benefit MORE if it was someone else who spent the money. That's why we have the concept of a treaty like Kyoto.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

(1) Global warming will cost us money in the form of lost land, lost farm productivity, displacements of population centers, etc.

 

Land lost would be offset by land gained - that is, land in a climate previously too cold to grow crops.

[Dechristo]

Nunavut - Inuktitut for "Kansas".

[crackers]

Land lost would be offset by land gained - that is, land in a climate previously too cold to grow crops.

 

that assumes that soil quality is the same, that the distribution network is the same, that irrigation is available and a bunch of other big assumptions, doesn't it?

[tvashtarkatena]

Land lost would be offset by land gained - that is, land in a climate previously too cold to grow crops.

 

Most models predict harsher, dryer winters for the world's grain producing plains that would lead to desertification and a loss in arable land that far exceeds that from oceanic inundation. Nearly all uncultivated northern terrain in NA, and EAsia is an extension of these plains, and would suffer an even harsher fate. That land would become LESS arable, not more.

 

If the Gulf Stream is shortcircuited due to the introduction of massive amounts of fresh water from the Greenland Icecap, Europe could ironically be plunged into an ice age...again, with a massive loss of arable land. This actually happened after the last ice age, so it's not just a theory.

 

Finally, many crops are day length, not just temperature, dependent. Any gardener knows this. They would grow no closer to the poles than they do now, regardless of temperature.

 

I realize that this kind of information requires more in depth thinking than "Hey, it's gonna get warmer, so we can just move our tomato plants further north!", but, then again, what do I know? I'm just a dumbass.

Edited November 2, 2006 by tvashtarkatena