Jump to content
Snow?
Local
Radar
Cold?
IGNORED

The World's Glaciers


knocker

Recommended Posts

Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

A flood of problems

Peru’s glaciers have made it a laboratory for adapting to climate change. It’s not going well.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/world/2017/08/07/perus-glaciers-have-made-it-a-laboratory-for-adapting-to-climate-change-its-not-going-well/?utm_term=.049c490b4e25

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
  • Location: Winchester, Hants, UK 68m asl
  • Location: Winchester, Hants, UK 68m asl

Here's my very quick translation (I'm an Italian/English translator amongst other things) of an article about the Calderone Glacier on Gran Sasso - not too far from Rome - about half way down Italy. Link to original (with photos): http://www.meteo.it/giornale/il-ghiacciaio-del-calderone-non-e-scomparso-12944.shtml

My translation: 

The Calderone Glacier hasn’t disappeared – under the detritus, a layer of buried ice between 15 and 25 metres thick, can still be found.

The Calderone Glacier, on the Gran Sasso Massif, is the southernmost in Europe, and in the last few days, some alarming news has been received on its state of health: it’s virtually disappeared! In reality, on the surface, only 3 snowfields of reduced size remain, and they’re unlikely to survive to the end of the season. The situation is explained by the unusual climate conditions of the last few months; from the scarce spring snow to the anomalous heat of the summer. Indeed, as Professor Fazzini, a climatologist from the University of Camerino confirms, the weather station situated at the Rifugio Franchetti, at the base of the glacier has recorded temperatures higher than 20 degrees on 5 separate occasions in the first half of August – exceptionally high for such an altitude.

However, all this doesn’t mean that the glacier has disappeared; under the detritus, in fact, a layer of buried ice between 15 and 25 metres thick, can still be found. The glacier therefore survives, protected by rocky detritus, even though, as Professor Fazzini reminds us: “In the last 10 years its thickness has shrunk by around a metre”, in all probability down to recent climatic change.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

Humboldt Glacier - the last glacier of Venezuela

Quote

Glaciers are retreating around the world as the planet warms. In the Andes, they’ve been in retreat for more than a century, with recession, as geographers call it, speeding up in more recent years. This is “consistent with the expected impacts” of regional and global climate changes, write Carsten Braun and Maximiliano Bezada in their history of the disappearing glaciers in Venezuela.

https://daily.jstor.org/the-last-glacier-of-venezuela/

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

Impact of a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius on Asia’s glaciers

Quote

Glaciers in the high mountains of Asia (HMA) make a substantial contribution to the water supply of millions of people1, 2, and they are retreating and losing mass as a result of anthropogenic climate change3 at similar rates to those seen elsewhere4, 5. In the Paris Agreement of 2015, 195 nations agreed on the aspiration to limit the level of global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius ( °C) above pre-industrial levels. However, it is not known what an increase of 1.5 °C would mean for the glaciers in HMA. Here we show that a global temperature rise of 1.5 °C will lead to a warming of 2.1 ± 0.1 °C in HMA, and that 64 ± 7 per cent of the present-day ice mass stored in the HMA glaciers will remain by the end of the century. The 1.5 °C goal is extremely ambitious and is projected by only a small number of climate models of the conservative IPCC’s Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP)2.6 ensemble. Projections for RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 reveal that much of the glacier ice is likely to disappear, with projected mass losses of 49 ± 7 per cent, 51 ± 6 per cent and 64 ± 5 per cent, respectively, by the end of the century; these projections have potentially serious consequences for regional water management and mountain communities.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v549/n7671/full/nature23878.html?foxtrotcallback=true

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

A new world is emerging as the largest glaciers in the Rocky Mountains retreat

The Rocky Mountains' Largest Glaciers Are Melting with Little Fanfare

The glaciers remain some of the least understood ice sheets in North America

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-rocky-mountains-largest-glaciers-are-melting-with-little-fanfare/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

Satellite images show that the glaciers in Norway have shrunk by 326 square kilometers
In 30 years, eleven percent of glaciers in Norway have disappeared, showing new research results based on comparison of satellite images and map based on aerial photo.

It is an area larger than the island of Malta.

https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrk.no%2Fnorge%2Fsatellittbilder-viser-at-isbreene-i-norge-har-krympet-med-326-kvadratkilometer-1.13701086

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

34th Annual, 2017 North Cascade Glacier Climate Project Field Season

Quote

For the thirty fourth consecutive summer we headed into the field to monitor the continued response of North Cascade glaciers to climate change.  In 1984 when I began this program we selected 10 key glaciers to monitor.  Two of these have now disappeared.  All the glaciers have retreated extensively and lost considerable volume.  The mass balance loss is 19 m of water equivalent thickness, which is over 20 m of ice thickness loss on glaciers that averaged less than 75 m thick. This is significant with 25-30% of their entire volume lost. This project continues to monitor glacier loss and the runoff they provide.  We also complete an annual inventory of ice worms on Sholes Glacier and mountain goats on Ptarmigan Ridge region.  In 2017 our key project was a continue partnership with the Nooksack Indian Tribe monitoring glacier melt and runoff in the North Fork Nooksack River basin.  We have not yet had the chance to determine the daily glacier discharge and the resultant contribution to the North Fork Nooksack River. The dry conditions of August certainly will lead to many days with  more than 40% of the flow coming from glacier melt as was the case in 2015. 

http://blogs.agu.org/fromaglaciersperspective/2017/10/03/34th-annual-2017-north-cascade-glacier-climate-project-field-season/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

‘Disastrous’: Low snow, heat eat away at Northwest glaciers

Quote

Glaciers across the North Cascades could lose 5 to 10 percent of their volume this year, accelerating decades of steady decline. One scientist estimates the region’s glaciers are smaller than they have been in at least 4,000 years.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/science/disastrous-low-snow-heat-eat-away-at-northwest-glaciers/

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Cockermouth, Cumbria - 47m ASL
  • Weather Preferences: Winter - snow
  • Location: Cockermouth, Cumbria - 47m ASL

https://dailyplanet.climate-kic.org/glacier-retreat-can-slowed-artificially-produced-snow/

This isn't as difficult as it may sound if those glaciers that form part of a ski resort are tackled first as the snow making infrastructure already exists and would just need extending. It would also make it more financially justifiable as the resorts would benefit from an enlarged summer ski area.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...
Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne
7 hours ago, tablet said:

not all glaciers in the world are doing badly though , Greenland’s Petermann glacier for example

1.thumb.JPG.b316c74dea8d845ab7d016f578fcf813.JPG2.thumb.JPG.5f5704f84a2058e18d0890c749511fb7.JPG3.thumb.JPG.2d0fcfcee19e1f111133774278819aca.JPG4.thumb.JPG.384a983d0b31fef08593782fa8774d5c.JPG5.thumb.JPG.3d5332dfbd73586c0265a8fadcad6fa2.JPG6JPG.thumb.JPG.9a87a280ef67ffe52a70691583b12c1f.JPG

Rather depends on what you mean by doing badly

Quote

Two huge glacier calving events have occurred at Petermann Glacier over the past 5 years, one in 2010 and another in 2012 [9, 10]. During each event a large portion of the floating ice tongue broke away and drifted out of the fjord, before finally melting and disintegrating in Baffin Bay. These twin calving events resulted in a glacier retreat of 35 km, the most retreated position since the area was first surveyed in 1875 [11, 8]. Glacier calving and retreat has prompted speculation about the glaciers future, a major motivation for the Petermann 2015 expedition. It is crucial that we understand whether these calving events are part of the natural cyclical behaviour of the glacier, or stem from external influences – either through climate or ocean warming. We hope to answer these questions by reconstructing the behaviour of the glacier, oceans, and climate over timescales of thousands of years, providing valuable context against which to assess the magnitude of current changes.

https://petermannsglacialhistory.wordpress.com/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

Six Decades of Glacial Mass Loss in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago

Quote

Plain Language Summary

Outside the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago is home to 14% of the world's ice‐covered area. Ice caps can be found on Ellesmere and Baffin Islands in the north and south of the archipelago. Here we present a novel daily, 1 km surface mass balance product for the period 1958–2015 that allows us to quantify the contemporary mass loss of Canadian ice caps and identify the acting processes. The high‐resolution product realistically resolves local patterns of mass change over narrow glaciers and confined ice fields that are often found in the Canadian Arctic. We show that these ice caps have been losing mass for decades and that mass loss accelerated in 1996. This followed a significant warming (+1.1°C), which increased the production of meltwater. While the snow covering the interior of the northern ice caps can still buffer most of this additional melt through refreezing, the lack of a perennial snow cover over low‐lying southern ice caps caused uninterrupted mass loss since the 1980s. If this trend is not reversed, these southern ice caps might disappear within 400 years.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2017JF004304

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • UK Storm and Severe Convective Forecast

    UK Severe Convective & Storm Forecast - Issued 2024-03-29 07:13:16 Valid: 29/03/2024 0600 - 30/03/2024 0600 THUNDERSTORM WATCH - FRI 29 MARCH 2024 Click here for the full forecast

    Nick F
    Nick F
    Latest weather updates from Netweather

    Difficult travel conditions as the Easter break begins

    Low Nelson is throwing wind and rain at the UK before it impacts mainland Spain at Easter. Wild condtions in the English Channel, and more rain and lightning here on Thursday. Read the full update here

    Netweather forecasts
    Netweather forecasts
    Latest weather updates from Netweather

    UK Storm and Severe Convective Forecast

    UK Severe Convective & Storm Forecast - Issued 2024-03-28 09:16:06 Valid: 28/03/2024 0800 - 29/03/2024 0600 SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH - THURS 28 MARCH 2024 Click here for the full forecast

    Nick F
    Nick F
    Latest weather updates from Netweather
×
×
  • Create New...