You are browsing the archive for glacier melt Archives - From a Glacier's Perspective.
September 4, 2015
Visualizing Glacier Melt Impacts
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 …
December 18, 2014
Glaciers have the Wrong Business Model
This is the story of a glacier that recently went to a bank for a loan, the Sholes Glacier, North Cascade Range, Washington. … “A recent resolution of mine is to work to change my future. I first had to go to the trouble of getting registered as a business so the bank would even recognize my existence, simply having existing on a map was not sufficient. This despite the …
June 5, 2011
Ampere Glacier Retreat Kerguelen Island
Kerguelen Island sits alone at the edge of the furious fifties in the southern Indian Ocean. he island features numerous glaciers, the largest being the Cook Ice Cap at 400 square kilometers. A comparison of aerial images from 1963 and 2001 by Berthier et al (2009) indicated the ice cap had lost 21 % of its area in the 38 year period. T In this paper they focused particular attention …
January 2, 2011
Thiel Glacier Alaska ongoing retreat
Thiel Glacier is a valley glacier in the Juneau icefield of Alaska. The glacier was a tributary of the Gilkey Glacier and is shown as such in USGS maps. From 1948-2005 the glacier has retreated 2100 meters from its former junction with the Gilkey Glacier. Below is the USGS map of the area showing the junction of the Battle, Gilkey and Thiel Glacier. The same view from the 2005 Google …
December 29, 2010
Methods for assessing and forecasting the survival of North Cascade, Washington glaciers
This paper was just published, Methods for assessing and forecasting the survival of North Cascade, Washington glaciers. It represents the third in a series of papers that looks at methods to identify when an alpine glacier will not survive. The first paper was using the change in thickness along a profile up the center of the glacier. Glaciers that were thinning appreciably and similarly along their entire length were determined …
December 26, 2010
Castle Creek Glacier, BC annual retreat recorded
Castle Creek Glacier is in the Cariboo Mts. of British Columbia. The glacier descends north-northeast for 6.3 km from 2825 meters to the terminus at 1,810 meters. During the last 50 years of retreat has left a series of annual terminal recessional moraines that indicate how much the glacier has retreated each year. The glacier has a remarkably uniform and relatively low slope for an alpine glacier. This is one …
December 8, 2010
Midtdalsbreen Glacier, Norway retreat Continues in 2010
The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate is the most extensive national glacier monitoring program in the world. They noted in 2010 that 27 of 31 glaciers monitored retreated. Midtdalsbreen near Finse drains the eastern portion of the Hardangerjøkulen (Hardanger ice Cap). This glacier retreated 34 meters from 2009 to 2010 and has retreated 143 meters in the last 10 years. This retreat is less than the retreat of Rembesdalsskaka …
October 7, 2010
Quien Sabe Glacier Retreat
The Quien Sabe Glacier in the North Cascades of Washington has experienced rapid retreat in the last 20 years. This glacier is the largest in Boston Basin near Cascade Pass, its name translates to “who knows?”, well we all know it is not enjoying recent climate. In the 1960 Austin Post photograph he gave to me in 1994, the glacier was heavily crevassed and advancing. By 1975 the advance had …
July 26, 2010
Lemon Creek Glacier Retreat Juneau Icefield Alaska
Above is a paired Landsat image with 1984 left and 2013 right, indicating a 300 m retreat in this interval. Annual balance measurements on the Lemon Creek Glacier, Alaska conducted by the Juneau Icefield Research Program from 1953 to 2013 provide a continuous 61 year record. This is one of the nine American glaciers selected in a global monitoring network during the IGY, 1957-58 and one of only two were …
July 8, 2010
The Lower Curtis Glacier on Mount Shuksan advanced from 1950-1975 and has retreated 150 meters from 1987-2009. A longitudinal profile up the middle of the glacier indicates that it thinned 30 meters from 1908-1984 and 10 m from 1984-2008. Compare the 1908 image taken by Asahel Curtis (glacier named for him) in 1908 and our annual glacier shot in 2003. The thinning has been as large in the accumulation zone …
Dean of Academic Affairs at Nichols College and Professor of Environmental Science at Nichols College in Massachusetts since 1989. Glaciologist directing the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project since 1984. This project monitors the mass balance and behavior of more glaciers than any other in North America.