Imagine that.
Study Says Glaciers Formed During a Very Warm Period
Published: January 11, 2008
OSLO (Reuters) — Giant glaciers formed about 90 million years ago during a warm period when alligators thrived in the Arctic, researchers said Thursday, calling into question the belief that all ice melts in a “super greenhouse” climate.
The researchersÂ’ study, based on organic molecules in ocean sediments and chemicals in ancient fossil shells, indicated that there were ice sheets in Antarctica in parts of the Turonian period, one of the warmest times in history, when dinosaurs thrived..................................cont'
Science News
Did Early Global Warming Divert A New Glacial Age?
Science Daily (Dec. 18, 2008) — The common wisdom is that the invention of the steam engine and the advent of the coal-fueled industrial age marked the beginning of human influence on global climate.
But gathering physical evidence, backed by powerful simulations on the world's most advanced computer climate models, is reshaping that view and lending strong support to the radical idea that human-induced climate change began not 200 years ago, but thousands of years ago with the onset of large-scale agriculture in Asia and extensive deforestation in Europe.
What's more, according to the same computer simulations,
the cumulative effect of thousands of years of human influence on climate is preventing the world from entering a new glacial age, altering a clockwork rhythm of periodic cooling of the planet that extends back more than a million years.....
Kingman Daily Miner Oct 7, 2001
Geologists Find More Than 100 New Glaciers Forming In National Park .
Previously, officials believed the park 60 miles northwest of Denver included 20 permanent ice and snow features, including six named glaciers. The new ...
Odd, that is exactly opposite what the people at the Park Service say.
Glaciers and Climate
Climate is the “average weather” in a location. Though climate actually refers to the entire state of the atmospheric system, it is commonly described by temperature or precipitation. Climate determines how much snow a glacier receives and how fast it melts. The part of the year when glaciers gain more ice than they lose is called the accumulation season. In Colorado, the accumulation season is usually from October to May. The part of the year when glaciers lose more ice than they gain is the ablation season, generally from June through September. During a cool, wet year, glaciers gain more snow than they lose, causing the glacier to thicken, and subsequently, advance. During warm, dry years, they melt more snow and ice than they receive, causing them to retreat.
Although glaciers always flow downhill, the idea of glacier “retreat” may give the impression that a glacier can move uphill. In fact, a glacier is in retreat when the rate of movement downhill cannot keep up with the rate of melting. The glacier is melting back faster than it is moving downhill, so it is said to “retreat”. By contrast, when a glacier advances, its downhill flow is greater than the melt at the terminus.
The rate of glacier response has to do with the volume of the glacier and the rate of mass exchange (accumulation and ablation of snow and ice). For example, for the same size glacier, small rates of mass exchange (like glaciers in polar regions) result in slow responses and high rates (like glaciers in the U.S.) cause fast responses. Smaller glaciers response more quickly than larger glaciers. The position, orientation, or elevation of a glacier affects the magnitude of glacier change in response to climate.
Because of their small size, glaciers at RMNP are very sensitive to fluctuations in temperature and respond quickly to warming or cooling. However, due to the locations of the basins in which they reside, most of their accumulation is due to the redistribution of snow by wind or by avalanching, and the accumulation rates on the glaciers can be many times higher than the seasonal snowfall. Because of this, the glaciers are relatively insensitive to variations in snowfall. Variations in glacier mass are caused by changes in summer temperatures from year to year, and perhaps changes in summer cloud cover. Annual measurements in the changes of the mass of Andrews Glacier can be related directly to summer temperature. Warmer summer temperatures melt more ice than cooler summer (4).
The glaciers at RMNP retreated during the first half of the twentieth century as a response to warming at the end of the Little Ice Age (a minor ice age extending from the 16th to the mid 19th century). Many of the glaciers reached a minimum size during the mid-1940s, and fluctuated around a slightly larger size during the 1950s and 1960s. They advanced somewhat through the 1970s and 1980s due to cooler summer temperatures.
However since the 1990s almost all glaciers in RMNP have shown a retreat due to high rates of increasing summer temperatures, some shrinking past their historic minimum sizes from the 1940s (4). This pattern of twentieth century fluctuations in mass is similar to that seen by glaciers across North America and globally (5).
Glaciers of Rocky Mountain National Park - Glacier Basics