September 4, 2015

Visualizing Glacier Melt Impacts

Posted by Mauri Pelto

Key questions emerge from the summer of 2015 in the Pacific Northwest glacier basins. That can both be visualized and quantified.

With record temperatures and minimum flows in most rivers in the Cascade Range during July and August of 2015, a key question was how much did glaciers contribute in basins that are glaciated?  Note the water pouring off the glacier and the lack of snowcover in the first few minutes of the video.

You can examine flow per unit watershed area as a first order observation. In the unglaciated South Fork discharge was 0.5 cfs/square mile, rising to 0.7 cfs/square mile in the lightly glaciated Skykomish River and 4.3 cfs/square mile in the heavily glaciated North Fork Nooksack.   For a more direct measure we measured ablation from July 29 to August 17th in the North Fork Nooksack and Skykomish River basin.  With the Nooksack Tribe we also measured discharge below glaciers in the North Fork but those recorders are still deployed in the field.

Because the glaciers had mostly ice, not snow at the surface, melting was enhanced.  We found in the Skykomish Basin that glacier runoff was 45 CFS versus a mean discharge of 375 CFS , this is 12% of the total flow despite covering only 1.3 % of the basin.  In the North Fork Nooksack glacier runoff was 340 CFS versus total flow of  460 CFS, this is 74% of the total flow though only 6.1 % of the basin has glacier cover. In both cases the glaciers contributed a river flow percentage 12 times greater than the percent of basin area they cover.  With a substantial loss in glacier area occurring this summer, next year glacier runoff for the given climate conditions will be reduced. Given this higher flow the glacier fed streams offer less stressful conditions this summer to salmon.

How much did glacier runoff water temperature amelioration?

In the South Fork Nooksack without glaciers stream temperature was above 20 C on eight days between Aug.1 and Aug. 20. In the North Fork Nooksack with glacier contribution, the stream temperature peaked at 13-14 C.

With the early loss of snowcover and exposure of the underlying ice, how are glacier ice worms impacted?  In the video note ice worms featured in the first minute in a glacier filled crevasse.

These worms live on snow algae primarily, which would seem to be in short supply in a summer with limited snowpack on the glaciers.  How well can they survive being on the glacier ice for extended periods?  For the 21st year we conducted ice worm population surveys.  The numbers were the lowest we have seen at 175-250 ice worms per square meter, but it should be next year when the full impact would be evident.

How much glacier area will be lost?  Note the visual of terminus retreat.
The summer is not over, but our observations indicate a 5-7 % volume loss will occur.  This should be approximately equaled by area loss.  Hopefully good satellite imagery in September will provide a specific answer.  The Aug. 17th Landsat image is excellent. Retreat just this summer has been 40 m on Easton Glacier, 32 meters on Columbia Glacier, 25 meters on Sholes Glacier and 30 meters on Lower Curtis Glacier.

mount baker 9172015

 

Aug. 17 Landsat image.  Arrows indicate areas where we observed rapid area loss of glacier ice this summer.