Disappearing frontier: Alaska's glaciers retreating at record pace

By Yereth Rosen

 

Chugach National Forest ranger Megan Parsley holds photos showing this summer's ice loss at the face of Portage Glacier, Alaska, U.S. August 17, 2019. Picture taken August 17, 2019. REUTERS/Yereth Rosen

 

ANCHORAGE (Reuters) - Alaska will soon close a year that is shaping up as its hottest on record, with glaciers in the "Frontier State" melting at record or near-record levels, pouring waters into rising global seas, scientists said after taking fall measurements.

 

Lemon Creek Glacier in Juneau, where records go back to the 1940s, had its second consecutive year of record mass loss, with 3 meters erased from the surface, U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Louis Sass told Reuters.

 

Melt went all the way up to the summit, said Sass, one of the experts who travel to benchmark glaciers to take measurements in the fall.

 

“That’s a really bad sign for a glacier,” he said, noting that high-altitude melt means there is no accumulation of snow to compact into ice and help offset lower-elevation losses.

 

At Wolverine Glacier on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage, loss was the second highest in a record that goes back to the 1960s. Sass said it failed to match the record set in 2004 only because so much of the glacier had already melted.

 

“The lower part’s completely gone now,” he said.

 

Drastic melting was also reported at Kenai Fjords National Park, which former President Barack Obama once visited to call attention to climate change. There, Bear Glacier, a popular tourist spot, retreated by nearly a kilometer in just 11 months, according to August measurements by the National Park Service.

 

“It’s almost like you popped it and it started to deflate,” said Nate Lewis, a Seward-based wilderness guide who takes travelers into the new lake that has formed at the foot of the shrinking glacier.

 

Even one of the few Alaska glaciers that had been advancing, Taku just southeast of the city of Juneau, is now losing ice at a fast clip.

 

Particularly ominous is the high altitude at which Taku is melting, said Mauri Pelto, who heads the North Cascades Glacier Climate Project. This year, the summer melt reached as high as 1,450 meters, 25 meters above the previous high-altitude record set just last year, he said.    

   

CASTING OFF CHUNKS

Now that it is retreating, Taku is expected to start casting off big ice chunks, increasing Alaska’s already significant contribution to rising sea levels, according to a study authored by Chris McNeil of the U.S. Geological Survey and co-authored by Sass, USGS glaciologist Shad O'Neel and others.

 

The study is scheduled to be presented at the annual conference of the American Geophysics Union next week in San Francisco.

 

Alaska recorded its warmest month ever in July and the trend has continued.

 

"Alaska is on pace to break their record for warmest year unless December is dramatically cooler than forecasted," Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks' International Arctic Research Center, said in a Dec. 1 tweet.

 

Alaska’s glaciers account for far less than 1 percent of the world’s land ice. But their melt contributes roughly 7 percent of the water that is raising the world’s sea levels, according a 2018 study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and co-authored by O’Neel.

 

There are also local impacts. Scientists say glacial melt affects salmon-spawning streams and harms marine fish and animal habitats. It is creating new lakes in the voids where ice used to be, and outburst floods from those lakes are happening more frequently, scientists say.

 

Changes in the glaciers and the ecosystems they feed has been so fast that they are hard to track, said O'Neel at USGS, who measured the melt at Wolverine Glacier in September. “Everything’s been pretty haywire lately.”

 

(Reporting by Yereth Rosen; editing by Bill Tarrant and David Gregorio)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-12-10

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This you see all over the world and the ones that can change it, will not do one thing to change it, because then they will stop earning their money ( it's never enough!)

Let me see now. Photo at the beginning of summer with ice; photo at the end of summer with less ice. So surprising! ????

11 minutes ago, DoctorG said:

Let me see now. Photo at the beginning of summer with ice; photo at the end of summer with less ice. So surprising! ????

Sihhhh sad to see such willful ignorance but take heart most of thease people are old and dying off the younger folks will evolve towards renewables hopefully in a responsible way as to cause as least disruption as possible 

19 minutes ago, DoctorG said:

Let me see now. Photo at the beginning of summer with ice; photo at the end of summer with less ice. So surprising! ????

Stop the presses. According to DoctorG the glaciers are coming back in the winter.

24 minutes ago, Tug said:

Sihhhh sad to see such willful ignorance but take heart most of thease people are old and dying off the younger folks will evolve towards renewables hopefully in a responsible way as to cause as least disruption as possible 

Typical of you and @sirineou to not refute what I wrote but just to continue pressing your mantra.

Too bad they didn't have photos from the 1800's of it getting bigger.

18 minutes ago, DoctorG said:

Typical of you and @sirineou to not refute what I wrote but just to continue pressing your mantra.

I thought I did refute what you said with humor. Do you really think the glaciers are coming back in the winter?

1 hour ago, sirineou said:

I thought I did refute what you said with humor. Do you really think the glaciers are coming back in the winter?

Never said they were going to. Could take a few years.

1 hour ago, DoctorG said:

Typical of you and @sirineou to not refute what I wrote but just to continue pressing your mantra.

Ok I call willful ignorance as a person who has spent his life working in intimate contact with nature it is hotter there is a lot less living things in the sea

Quote

 

Get greta on it she,'ll know what to do and sort it out.

15 minutes ago, DoctorG said:

Never said they were going to. Could take a few years.

We haven,t got a few years,get greta on it.

What's with the incessant reporting on climate change doomsday news?  Seems like there's a new article every other day.  And it's all slanted in favour of climate change alarmists.  Don't see articles with countering viewpoints at all.

A wiser man than me once said: How do you know, climate change is getting worse?

When the hottest year on record is ALWAYS the one you are in!

 

But sure...make jokes about Greta and glaciers in summer or winter...I hope, for their good, that you don't have children, because unlike you, they WILL suffer the consequences of your ignorance!

3 hours ago, Tug said:

Sihhhh sad to see such willful ignorance but take heart most of thease people are old and dying off the younger folks will evolve towards renewables hopefully in a responsible way as to cause as least disruption as possible 

It is the newer generations of unrestrained greed and lack of moral fibre that is causing most of today's problems.

 

1 minute ago, rabas said:

It is the newer generations of unrestrained greed and lack of moral fibre that is causing most of today's problems.

 

And the fact there's too many people for this planet to support?

50 minutes ago, Tug said:

Ok I call willful ignorance as a person who has spent his life working in intimate contact with nature it is hotter there is a lot less living things in the sea

Why is there a lot less life in the sea?  You weren't out there fishing were you?

 

Go to Alaskas, Glacier bay and see the Glaciers calf in August. Maybe get the Swede teen to

sail to Alaska and protest the melting Glaciers. If Alaska was part of Canada, then Dictator Trudeau could charge them all a carbon tax. If the new generation of youngsters

want to save the world, go live in caves, drive a one horse power horse, instead of owning a car or Suv, or truck, wear hides and pure cloth clothes, etc. Well since that won't happen,

maybe it is time to get total truths of the climate change, and what percent

is really caused by mankind versus nature.

 

Geezer

yeah right, it was 2 meters thick 60 years ago  and its 2 meters thick today,

try harder.

this is nothing new btw, its re-arsing same drivel once every few decennia

to stir up some anxiety

3 hours ago, Saint Nick said:

A wiser man than me once said: How do you know, climate change is getting worse?

When the hottest year on record is ALWAYS the one you are in!

 

But sure...make jokes about Greta and glaciers in summer or winter...I hope, for their good, that you don't have children, because unlike you, they WILL suffer the consequences of your ignorance!

More like two fools, the lesser fool considered as the wise one.

 

I must add this disclaimer:

 

Since you framed it as a joke I'm merely playing off your joke.  Not calling you a fool, O.K.?

 

As for insinuating that "climate deniers" are ignorant, well, one man's gold is another man's rubbish.  Climate change is rubbish.

4 hours ago, Saint Nick said:

But sure...make jokes about Greta and glaciers in summer or winter...I hope, for their good, that you don't have children, because unlike you, they WILL suffer the consequences of your ignorance!

More likely, they will suffer from the smug arrogance and unjustified moral self-righteousness of the activists.

 

Future generations will certainly not thank us if we impoverish them through all manner of badly thought-out taxes and regulations designed to bring about an end to capitalism.

 

As Christiana Figueres, the former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), put it: "This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution."

 

Talk about a rotten legacy to leave future generations.

1 hour ago, RickBradford said:

More likely, they will suffer from the smug arrogance and unjustified moral self-righteousness of the activists.

 

Future generations will certainly not thank us if we impoverish them through all manner of badly thought-out taxes and regulations designed to bring about an end to capitalism.

 

As Christiana Figueres, the former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), put it: "This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution."

 

Talk about a rotten legacy to leave future generations.

...and rethinking something, that was in place for 150 years is bad....becauuuuuuse...?!

I mean, we used to burn witches at the stake for some decades and we stopped, because we found out it was somehow not the right thing to do!

But sure: things that were okay the last 150 years, will still be a-okay for the next 150 years!

And now, I will take my monocle, get on my high- wheel bicycle and go home to my wife and kids - little Timmy is suffering from  a bad cough, he got while he was chimney- sweeping!

54 minutes ago, Saint Nick said:

...and rethinking something, that was in place for 150 years is bad....becauuuuuuse...?!

I mean, we used to burn witches at the stake for some decades and we stopped, because we found out it was somehow not the right thing to do!

But sure: things that were okay the last 150 years, will still be a-okay for the next 150 years!

And now, I will take my monocle, get on my high- wheel bicycle and go home to my wife and kids - little Timmy is suffering from  a bad cough, he got while he was chimney- sweeping!

Hang on to your high-wheel bicycle. It will end up as the only alternative to Shanks' pony if the globalists and greens get their way.

1 hour ago, Saint Nick said:

...and rethinking something, that was in place for 150 years is bad....becauuuuuuse...?!

* Life expectancy has risen from 30 to 75

* Global poverty has dropped from 80% to 10%

* We have eliminated smallpox and rinderpest, almost eliminated polio, confined malaria to parts of Asia, Africa and South America. Measles was eliminated from the US population in 2000.

* Literacy has increased from 55% to 86% in just the past 70 years.

 

These advances would have been impossible without a wealth-creating mechanism such as capitalism. Besides, Figueres wasn't talking about "rethinking" it, but intentionally "changing" it.

 

That is the level of stupidity that even -- or perhaps especially -- high-ranking activists display.

7 hours ago, Tippaporn said:

Don't see articles with countering viewpoints at all.

They are out there, harder to find though as our"Masters" at silicone valley who control what we are allowed to read, prefer to go with the impending doom and gloom theory, more money in it for them I guess! 

I read more and more now "google is your friend" no friend of mine, there will come a time when many more will realise the same thing - maybe ????

10 hours ago, RickBradford said:

* We have eliminated smallpox and rinderpest, almost eliminated polio, confined malaria to parts of Asia, Africa and South America. Measles was eliminated from the US population in 2000.

Are you sure about eliminating Measles from the US?  There has been a resurgence in Measles over the past year in particular areas of the US.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles_resurgence_in_the_United_States

19 hours ago, Saint Nick said:

A wiser man than me once said: How do you know, climate change is getting worse?

When the hottest year on record is ALWAYS the one you are in!

 

But sure...make jokes about Greta and glaciers in summer or winter...I hope, for their good, that you don't have children, because unlike you, they WILL suffer the consequences of your ignorance!

 

Well fortunately people who believe in climate change are all wise enough to know having kids is a terrible thing to do if you believe in climate change. Those that have kids are ignorant and their children will suffer for that mistake. 

 

I guess my point is that anybody who has kids, especially more than one has no right to lecture anybody about their footprint on the planet. At the very least if you do have kids stop laying a guilt trip on those that do not. 

 

Having kids is the ultimate act of selfishness. Those who choose to do so are committing unforgivable sins against Mother Earth. Those that do so and use their kids as ammo in their climate change fight are the ultimate hypocrites. 

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Hanuman2547 said:

Are you sure about eliminating Measles from the US?  There has been a resurgence in Measles over the past year in particular areas of the US.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles_resurgence_in_the_United_States

 

Not that I care one way or another but I came down with measles about ten years ago in Phuket of all places.

17 hours ago, Krataiboy said:

Hang on to your high-wheel bicycle. It will end up as the only alternative to Shanks' pony if the globalists and greens get their way.

a) utter BS!

b) see a!