Glaciers in Utah melting

[Chris]

Glaciers on the iconic Teton Range are shrinking, researchers say, joining a growing list of glaciers in North America and beyond that are losing their surface area and potentially reducing the water supply for nearby regions.

Two of the Tetons' biggest glaciers have lost more than 20 percent of their surface area since the late 1960s, three University of Wyoming researchers concluded after comparing old and new aerial photographs of the glaciers.

The glaciers are a fairly substantial source of irrigation water, meaning the findings have wider implications than simply what the mountains look like to tourists by late summer. People in Wyoming and Idaho and to a lesser extent Utah use water from the glaciers.

"From an engineering-water supply perspective, we look at them as frozen reservoirs," said Glenn Tootle, a University of Tennessee-Knoxville assistant professor and co-principal investigator of the study funded by the Wyoming Water Development Commission.

The Wyoming Legislature appropriated $225,000 for the study in 2006, one of several water projects or studies lawmakers funded that year in the nation's fifth-driest state.

The findings are consistent with shrinking glaciers elsewhere. A recent U.S. Geological Survey study found that three long-observed glaciers in Alaska and Washington state have been shrinking at a faster rate in recent years. Other scientists have predicted that Montana's Glacier National Park will be devoid of glaciers by 2030.

Worldwide, the vast majority of glaciers measured below 15,000 feet have been shrinking in recent decades, said Richard Armstrong, a senior researcher with the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Researchers: shrinking Teton glaciers will affect Utah water - Salt Lake Tribune

 

[elvis]

Glaciers on the iconic Teton Range are shrinking, researchers say, joining a growing list of glaciers in North America and beyond that are losing their surface area and potentially reducing the water supply for nearby regions.

Two of the Tetons' biggest glaciers have lost more than 20 percent of their surface area since the late 1960s, three University of Wyoming researchers concluded after comparing old and new aerial photographs of the glaciers.

The glaciers are a fairly substantial source of irrigation water, meaning the findings have wider implications than simply what the mountains look like to tourists by late summer. People in Wyoming and Idaho and to a lesser extent Utah use water from the glaciers.

"From an engineering-water supply perspective, we look at them as frozen reservoirs," said Glenn Tootle, a University of Tennessee-Knoxville assistant professor and co-principal investigator of the study funded by the Wyoming Water Development Commission.

The Wyoming Legislature appropriated $225,000 for the study in 2006, one of several water projects or studies lawmakers funded that year in the nation's fifth-driest state.

The findings are consistent with shrinking glaciers elsewhere. A recent U.S. Geological Survey study found that three long-observed glaciers in Alaska and Washington state have been shrinking at a faster rate in recent years. Other scientists have predicted that Montana's Glacier National Park will be devoid of glaciers by 2030.

Worldwide, the vast majority of glaciers measured below 15,000 feet have been shrinking in recent decades, said Richard Armstrong, a senior researcher with the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Researchers: shrinking Teton glaciers will affect Utah water - Salt Lake Tribune

does al know? It's about time for his hysterics again.

 

[waltky]

Ice caps are melting rapidly - we all gonna die...

Scientists sound alarm over rapid ice cap melt
Sat, Nov 26, 2016 - Arctic scientists said that potentially faster melting of the ice cap risks triggering 19 “tipping points” in the region.

The Arctic Resilience Report said that the effects of Arctic warming could be detected as far away as the Indian Ocean. “The warning signals are getting louder,” said Marcus Carson of the Stockholm Environment Institute, one of the lead authors of the report. These developments “also make the potential for triggering [tipping points] and feedback loops much larger,” Carson said. Climate tipping points occur when a natural system, such as the polar ice cap, undergoes sudden or overwhelming change that has a profound effect on surrounding ecosystems, often irreversible.

In the Arctic, the tipping points identified in the new report, published yesterday, include: growth in vegetation on tundra, which replaces reflective snow and ice with darker vegetation, thus absorbing more heat; higher releases of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from the tundra as it warms; shifts in snow distribution that warm the ocean, resulting in altered climate patterns as far away as Asia, where monsoons could be effected; and the collapse of some key Arctic fisheries, with knock-on effects on ocean ecosystems around the globe. The research, compiled by 11 organizations, including the Arctic Council and six universities, comes at a critical time, not only because of Arctic temperature rises, but in political terms.

Aides to US president-elect Donald Trump this week unveiled plans to remove the budget for climate change science used by NASA and other US federal agencies for projects such as examining Arctic changes, and to spend it instead on space exploration. “That would be a huge mistake,” Carson said, adding that much more research needs to be done on polar tipping points. “It would be like ripping out the aeroplane’s cockpit instruments while you are in mid-flight,” he said. “These are very serious problems, very serious changes are happening, but they are still poorly understood,” he said. “We need more research to understand them. A lot of the major science is done by the US.” Scientists have speculated for some years that so-called feedback mechanisms — by which the warming of one area or type of landscape has knock-on effects for whole ecosystems — could suddenly take hold and change the dynamics of Arctic ice melting from a relatively slow pace to a fast-moving phenomenon with unpredictable and potentially irreversible consequences for global warming.

For instance, when sea ice shrinks, it leaves areas of dark ocean that absorb more heat than the reflective ice, which in turn causes further shrinkage, and so on in a spiral. The Arctic ice cap helps to cool sea and air temperatures by reflecting much of the sun’s radiation back into space and acting as a global cooler when winds and ocean currents swirl over and under it. It has long been known to play a key part of the global climate system, but the difficulty and expense of close monitoring have meant that scientists have only in recent years been able to make detailed assessments. The report, billed as the first comprehensive study of ecosystems and societies in the region, found: “The potential effects of Arctic regime shifts [or tipping points] on the rest of the world are substantial, yet poorly understood. Human-driven climate change greatly increases the risk of Arctic regime shifts, so reducing global greenhouse gas emissions is crucial to reducing this risk.”

MORE

 

[Old Rocks]

Peru’s Cordillera Blanca contain the most dense concentration of glaciers in the tropics, but the ice is rapidly melting. An international research team is assessing how the retreat of the glaciers is affecting the region’s rivers and people.


From the shade of an adobe house overlooking Peru's Santa River, Jimmy Melgarejo squints at the dual peaks of Mount Huascarán looming against a cloudless sky. “The snow keeps getting farther away,” says Melgarejo, a farmer worried about his livelihood. “It's moving up, little by little. When the snow disappears, there will be no water.”

Throughout the Andes, millions of people voice the same concern as they watch climate change eat away at the mountain chain's icy mantle. But although everyone fears a water shortage, they do not know how quickly it will come or how severe it will be.

Related stories

• Tibetan glaciers shrinking rapidly
• Rediscovered photos reveal Greenland's glacier history
• Taking the pulse of a shrinking glacier

More related stories

An interdisciplinary team of scientists is now trying to provide some answers through a US$1-million project funded by the US National Science Foundation. The crew, which pulls together hydrologists, geochemists, geographers and historians, mainly from the United States and Canada, is tracking the fate of glacial meltwater as it runs from the mountains down to the ocean. Their goal is to develop models to forecast water flow and its effects on residents downstream. The rapid changes in the Andes “warrant a new kind of interdisciplinary, integrated study”, says geographer Bryan Mark of Ohio State University in Columbus, who is one of the principal investigators of the project. “We're trying to cross traditional boundaries, so we're not studying water separately from people.”

Melting in the Andes: Goodbye glaciers

The recession of the glaciers is a very serious matter for agriculture that depends on the water toward the end of summer. And in all the mountain ranges of the world, the glaciers are receding.

 

[Old Rocks]

Closer to home;

The changing glaciers of Mt. Hood, Oregon and Mt. Rainier, Washington : implications for periglacial debris flows
Ellinger, Jonathan R.

File Name: EllingerJonathanR2011.pdf
Size: 24.58Mb
Format: PDF
View/Open
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1957/18018
Date: 2010-08-30T21:35:23Z
Abstract:
Mountain glaciers are receding worldwide with numerous consequences including changing hydrology and geomorphology. This study focuses on changes in glacier area on Mt. Hood, Oregon and Mt. Rainier, Washington where damaging debris flows have occurred in glaciated basins. Landsat imagery is used to map debris-free ice on a decadal time scale from 1987 to 2005. Debris-free glacier ice is clearly delineated using a ratio of Landsat spectral bands in the near-infrared part of the spectrum (bands 4 & 5). Landsat scenes were chosen during the months of September and October to minimize snow cover left over from the accumulation season and maximize exposure of debris-free glacial ice. SNOTEL data were also used to find the lowest snow year for each decade to minimize the potential of misclassifying remnant snow as glacial ice. Changes in debris-free ice are mapped to produce the most up-to-date rates of glacier retreat. Average glacial slopes, derived from airborne LiDAR data are used to compute slope corrected debris-free ice areas for all glaciers. A threshold value for the Landsat NDGI scenes was selected based on threshold testing on the Eliot and Reid glaciers on Mt. Hood. Contradicting earlier studies that say the glaciers on Mt. Hood are receding faster than the glaciers on Mt. Rainier, results show that from 1987 to 2005 Mt. Rainier and Mt. Hood lost similar amounts of debris-free ice extent at 14.0% and 13.9%, respectively. For both Mt. Hood and Mt. Rainier the change in slope corrected debris-free ice area was greater than that of the projected area change due to the steep slopes of both mountains. For Mt. Rainier an increase in recession rate was shown from 1992-2005 compared to 1987-1992 while on Mt. Hood the opposite is seen. On Mt. Rainier it was found that highly fragmented glaciers at lower elevations such as the Inter, Pyramid, and the Van Trump Glaciers lost the highest percent of their original 1987 ice extent and were also shown to be associated with new debris flows in 2006. On Mt. Hood none of the 2006 debris flows initiated within zones of recent glacial recession, however, all debris flows from 2006 originated from streams with a direct connection to glaciers. The Newton Clark Glacier, having lost the most coverage of debris-free ice from 1987 to 2005, is also associated with the highest number of debris-flows in its drainage since 1980. Precipitation data for both mountains show no trend but there was a statistically significant increase in summer air temperature at Mt. Hood over the period 1984-2009. This study suggests that glaciers may play a role in the location of initiation sites, of debris flows, but there is not enough evidence to argue that glacier recession is responsible for producing debris flows.
Description:

 

[Old Rocks]

Glaciers on the iconic Teton Range are shrinking, researchers say, joining a growing list of glaciers in North America and beyond that are losing their surface area and potentially reducing the water supply for nearby regions.

Two of the Tetons' biggest glaciers have lost more than 20 percent of their surface area since the late 1960s, three University of Wyoming researchers concluded after comparing old and new aerial photographs of the glaciers.

The glaciers are a fairly substantial source of irrigation water, meaning the findings have wider implications than simply what the mountains look like to tourists by late summer. People in Wyoming and Idaho and to a lesser extent Utah use water from the glaciers.

"From an engineering-water supply perspective, we look at them as frozen reservoirs," said Glenn Tootle, a University of Tennessee-Knoxville assistant professor and co-principal investigator of the study funded by the Wyoming Water Development Commission.

The Wyoming Legislature appropriated $225,000 for the study in 2006, one of several water projects or studies lawmakers funded that year in the nation's fifth-driest state.

The findings are consistent with shrinking glaciers elsewhere. A recent U.S. Geological Survey study found that three long-observed glaciers in Alaska and Washington state have been shrinking at a faster rate in recent years. Other scientists have predicted that Montana's Glacier National Park will be devoid of glaciers by 2030.

Worldwide, the vast majority of glaciers measured below 15,000 feet have been shrinking in recent decades, said Richard Armstrong, a senior researcher with the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Researchers: shrinking Teton glaciers will affect Utah water - Salt Lake Tribune

does al know? It's about time for his hysterics again.

It's about time for knownothing assholes like you to shut your idiot mouths.

Northwest glaciers have that shrinking feeling

BEND, Ore. — Between the North Sister and Middle Sister in Oregon's Cascade Range, Collier Glacier has advanced and receded for hundreds of thousands of years. But like many glaciers, it is headed in one direction these days: backward.

It is in serious peril, says geologist Ellen Morris Bishop of the Fossil-based Oregon Paleo Lands Institute. "We have basically a really sad picture of Collier Glacier today."

Geologists blame among other things a warming climate, altering the landscape and perhaps the availability of water to high-elevation ecosystems. Collier is shrinking faster than most of the 35 glaciers in the state.

"Now everything is just in a chaotic shrink," Bishop said.

This summer she led a climate change-themed tour of the Central Oregon Cascades, starting from McKenzie Pass and heading south. Volcanic activity built the Cascades, but over eons the glaciers have worn them down.

At the glacier's base is a moraine, or a ridge of rocks, deposited by the slowly moving glacier when it was bigger. Today an empty valley fills the space between the ridge and the glacial edge.

"This was a full valley in 1906," Bishop said. Since then it has retreated more than a mile.

 

[AnCap'n_Murica]

The Tetons are on the WY & ID border, not in Utah.

 

[Old Rocks]

Cascade glaciers, Washington state.

 

[AnCap'n_Murica]

Yeah, and there still are no glaciers in Utah.

 

[Old Rocks]

Yeah, and there still are no glaciers in Utah.

100 Years on the Timpanogos Glacier : Articles : SummitPost

MMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, maybe one.

 

[waltky]

The Tetons are on the WY & ID border, not in Utah.

Mebbe dey moved `em...

... when ya wasn't lookin'.