Seattle Times -- North Cascade Glaciers Disappearing

Interesting and depressing article in the Seattle Times this weekend on glacier loss in the North Cascades due to global warming. There is nothing here that folks who follow this site and see the conditions in the mountains aren't already aware of, but important reminder.

seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews...3203_glaciers21.html

North Cascades glaciers victims of climate change
Lyman Glacier, sitting just below 8,459-foot Chiwawa Peak, is dying. Nearby, Spider Glacier is already gone.

By K.C. MEHAFFEY

The Wenatchee World

HOLDEN VILLAGE, Chelan County — Lyman Glacier, sitting just below 8,459-foot Chiwawa Peak, is dying.

Nearby, Spider Glacier is already gone. The scientist who pronounced it dead three years ago thinks one-third of the glaciers in the North Cascades — including Lyman — are doomed.

Mauri Pelto says the other two-thirds may have a chance, if the world does something to stop climate change. Pelto is an environmental-science professor at Nichols College in Dudley, Mass., and has studied glaciers for more than two decades.

In August, he completed his 25th hiking trip to several North Cascade glaciers. He's been watching and measuring the great slabs of moving ice every year since 1984. It is the largest study of glaciers in the North Cascades, home to one-third of all glaciers in the Lower 48 states.

He visits 10 glaciers every year for in-depth measurements, and monitors 37 others with less-regular trips. Five of them have already died, and all of the glaciers he's studying are now retreating. They've lost 20 to 40 percent of their volume.

Pelto says when he first learned about climate change as a graduate student at the University of Maine, before he started this study, he was skeptical.

"I'd been to a couple conferences related to global warming, and as a skier, I hated the idea. I was looking to find a hole in the argument," he says.

Instead, he found the science convincing.

Ronald Reagan was president, and the National Academy of Sciences was calling for someone to monitor glaciers across an entire mountain range. Pelto says government science budgets across the nation were being cut, and he knew no one would likely take on the academy's recommendation.

Took challenge

So he decided to take the challenge himself by making it his graduate thesis. He started the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project, which he intends to be a 50-year study of nearly 50 glaciers in the North Cascades.

He chose specific glaciers to represent different geographical features across the North Cascades — some are high-elevation, some are lower, some are north-facing, some face south, some are in Western Washington, and some — like Lyman — are on the east side of the range.



Now 46, a husband, father, professor, and halfway through his commitment, Pelto finds it hard to believe that anyone still questions that global warming is real.

He wonders what has to happen before people are convinced that the climate is changing. "What's the straw that's going to break the camel's back?"

Pelto says he also wonders how people — especially those who depend on water from the glacier-fed rivers, lakes and streams on the east and west slopes of the Cascades — will react once they realize what it means to lose these frozen reservoirs of water.

At the headwaters of the Chiwawa River Valley, a few miles into the Henry M. Jackson Wilderness, the trail opens out to alpine Spider Meadow, filled with late-summer flowers. It's a popular spot for both foot and horse campers.

Pelto and his team arrive at dusk on Aug. 10, set up the tent, have a quick dinner, get to bed and then wake early the next day for the steep climb to Lyman Glacier.

Leaving the meadow as the sun creeps over the peaks, they climb 2,300 vertical feet in a few long miles to Spider Gap before dropping down another 1,000 feet over a snowfield and across an unstable rock scree to the glacier. It's one of nine glaciers they'll visit on this two-week trip. Altogether, they'll hike over 100 miles and climb about 35,000 feet.

Lyman Glacier and its lakes are at the headwaters of Railroad Creek, which flows past Holden Village into Lake Chelan and then the Columbia River.

Pelto's team this year includes his 18-year-old son, Ben; Brad Markle, 22, a recent Pomona College graduate from Corvallis, Ore.; and Tom Hammond, an avid hiker and network engineer at the University of Washington and Pelto's field scientist.

The hike here was tough, eyes kept to the feet to keep from stumbling.

They immediately get to work, screwing together a heavy steel probe that they systematically punch through the snow until it hits ice. It measures how much snowpack remains from last winter.

Repeat measuring

They repeat this every 100 meters, or 330 feet, back and forth across the glacier.

"We're trying to get a mass balance, how much snow it gains versus how much it loses," Pelto says. "It's like balancing your checkbook," he says — if you continuously take out more money than you put in, eventually you run out.

Unless there's an unseasonably cool fall or early winter this year, Pelto predicts, Lyman Glacier will shrink again this year. Only 11 feet of snowpack were left at the deepest spot on the glacier by mid-August. In past years, he says, 10 to 12 feet of snow has melted from this glacier between mid-August and first snowfall.

Pelto has visited this glacier 12 times since he first came to take measurements in 1986. This is not one of the 10 glaciers under intensive study, but he tries to come here often.

This glacier is more than a quarter of a mile long and about half as wide. It's about one-third its former size, Pelto said. Since the Little Ice Age in about 1890, the glacier has receded about 1,365 meters — a couple hundred meters short of a mile. For the last 50 years, it's retreated about 33 feet per year.

He predicts it will disappear completely in 30 to 50 years.

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

A polemic (sp?):  Think most people believe globle warming is for real, but some wonder if in fact, it is man caused?  The argument I've heard is that it could be a "cyclical" part of nature.   Apparently  some believe volcanic activity could be the culprit rather than humans..........

Interesting and depressing article in the Seattle Times this weekend on glacier loss in the North Cascades due to global warming.  There is nothing here that folks who follow this site and see the conditions in the mountains aren't already aware of, but important reminder. 

True on both accounts. I was wondering just last night if my two children will have to go to Alaska to ski as adults. I don't think so, but I have heard that some of the IPCC 2001 predictions for the next thirty to forty years are already happening. With feedback loops building momentum I don't know that we can say where things will stand 50 years from now.

14,000 or so years ago, areas considerably south of here would have been the place to go for snow.  The Cascade glaciers really started receding in earnest then, and it'll all happen again and again.

www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc130k.html

Warming, then a cold snap. Around 14,000 years ago (about 13,000 radiocarbon years ago), there was a rapid global warming and moistening of climates, perhaps occurring within the space of only a few years or decades. In many respects, this phase seems to have resembled some of the earlier interstadials that had occurred so many times before during the glacial period. Conditions in many mid-latitude areas appear to have been about as warm as they are today, although many other areas - whilst warmer than during the Late Glacial Cold Stage - seem to have remained slightly cooler than at present. Forests began to spread back, and the ice sheets began to retreat. However, after a few thousand years of recovery, the Earth was suddenly plunged back into a new and very short-lived ice age known as the Younger Dryas. Although the Younger Dryas did not affect everywhere in the world, it destroyed the returning forests in the north and led to a brief resurgence of the ice sheets. This map by D. Peteet shows the possible distribution of Younger Dryas cooling around the world. The main cooling event that marks the beginning of the Younger Dryas seems have occurred within less than 100 years, according to Greenland ice core data (Alley et al. 1993). After about 1,300 years of cold and aridity, the Younger Dryas seems to have ended in the space of only a few decades (various estimates from ice core climate indicators range from 20 - 70 years for this sudden transition) when conditions became as warm as they are today. Around half of the warming seems to have occurred in the space of a single span of 15 years, according to the latest detailed analyses of the Greenland ice core record (Taylor et al. 1997).

A polemic (sp?):  Think most people believe globle warming is for real, but some wonder if in fact, it is man caused?  The argument I've heard is that it could be a "cyclical" part of nature.   Apparently  some believe volcanic activity could be the culprit rather than humans..........

Haven't heard the volcano idea before...  Mostly the obvious effects of volcanic activity is to cool.  This effect caused by dust and sulfate aerosols, which are far more effective cooling agents than the CO2 emitted.

As for charging the blame to man or natural cycle, I think what drives almost all scientists at this time to attribute the effect to man is the relative correlation to measured warming with an increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.  At this point both are indisputable.  The question remains if this correlation is cause and effect.  I think simple reason is convincing most and at this time it would seem that it is only the extreme fringe that believes it to not be a man made phenomenon.  Note, during this year even the die hard conservative politicos seem to now accept man's responsibility.  However there will always be those on the fringe who do not believe.  Having said this, strong correlation is not proof.

If the current warming is just part of a natural cycle (an unfortunate coincidence?), will that make it's impact all the easier to take for Earth's inhabitants?  We humans certainly have stretched our use of our abode quite a bit and our comfort zone may be so narrow as to cause major problems given a continuation of the trend.  In addition, if we are experiencing a natural phenomenon of cycled warming, our doubling and tripling of the CO2 levels in the atmosphere would likely enhance what would be about to happen.  Is that a good thing?

Alan

     skierguitarist- the idea, as i understand it, is not so much that it is man caused, but exponentially man- exacerbated. global warming may, and probably is a cyclical phenomenon. what is surprising, sad and important in this case is the speed of (glacial) retreat compared to historical events.
     as i see it, global warming isn't really the problem (although public and media hysteria might argue with me), it's a symptom of a bigger issue; we are poisoning our planet. there are so many other signs of this poisoning in addition to global warming.
     the thing that gets me every time is this; on any clear day go to an elevated point above any urban area (of factory, or airport.....) and look at the smog. tell me that that is not affecting the climate.
     complacency is the killer.
     by the way, skierguitarist, this is not a rant on you, just a rant for the sake of ranting. maybe it's because it's 6:30 a.m. and I'm up and thinking about it.