Glaciers largely stable in one range of Himalayas

An important portion of the Himalaya’s glacier cover is currently stable and, thanks to an insulating layer of debris, may be even growing, a new study finds. The study’s conclusion contradicts a portion of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that had to be retracted last year because it could not be substantiated.

Though the IPCC report stated that the risk of the region’s glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high,” the new study finds that ice cover is stable in the Karakoram mountains, a northern range that holds about half of the Himalaya’s store of frozen water.

That’s not to imply that water reservoirs on what’s often called the roof of the world aren’t under stress. Throughout most Himalayan ranges, roughly 65 percent of the studied glaciers were shrinking, Dirk Scherler of the University of Potsdam, Germany, and his colleagues report in the January 23 Nature Geoscience. But in Karakoram, 58 percent of studied glaciers were stable or slowly expanding up to 12 meters per year.

Scherler’s team pored over satellite images of 286 glaciers throughout the Himalayas. Collected between 2000 and 2008, they showed a consistent trend everywhere except the Karakoram: a reduction in the area of glacial cover. Many glaciers in those regions also were stagnant — not flowing — which, Scherler says, is an indicator of poor health.

A blanket of dust and rock debris apparently shields some glaciers in the world's highest mountain range from a thaw, a factor omitted from past global warming reports. And varying wind patterns might explain why some were defying a melt.

"Our study shows there is no uniform response of Himalayan glaciers to climate change and highlights the importance of debris cover," scientists at universities in Germany and the United States wrote in the study of 286 glaciers.

The report said that 58 percent of glaciers examined in the westerly Karakoram range of the Himalayas were stable or advancing, perhaps because they were influenced by cool westerly winds than the monsoon from the Indian Ocean.

The new findings are consistent with what Kenneth Hewitt of Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, has observed, and point to the fact “that the picture of climate change effects in high Asia is much more complicated than most people realize.”

Indeed, for much of the past century Karakoram’s glaciers were in retreat. A 2005 paper by Hewitt described a turnaround that commenced only in the late 1990s.

In the new study, Scherler’s team looked for factors that might affect the responsiveness of Himalayan glaciers to regional warming. A rocky blanket quickly emerged as a major one.

In general, the warmer the air above a glacier becomes the faster exposed ice will melt. A thin veneer of dust or grit will darken glaciers, increasing the amount of heat they absorb and exaggerating their warming, much as a dark roof becomes hotter in sunlight than a light gray one. But once the depth of any rock cover exceeds several centimeters, it will insulate ice from the sun’s warming rays. In some lower reaches of Himalayan glaciers, especially in the Karakoram, rock debris can include house-size boulders, Scherler observes.

In this range, it seems, rocky rubble eroded from uphill peaks serves to decouple the effects of regional warming from glacial retreats. The new analysis found retreat rates varied in the Himalaya “from high for debris-free glaciers to zero for glaciers with debris cover greater than 20 percent.”

What the satellite data, which surveys the extent of a glacier’s coverage, can’t establish is how much area glaciers might be thinning. Such information requires ground measurements, Hewitt says, which are particularly rare in this part of the world. But they could also prove quite crucial. He notes that some data emerging from India and China suggest that the diffuse fallout of soot from local industries, traffic and cook stoves might be subtly darkening debris-free portions of Himalayan glaciers — and constitute “a more significant factor than even temperature change in their melting.”


Source:
Science News, "Glaciers largely stable in one range of Himalayas", by Janice Raloff, accessed January 25, 2011
Reuters, "Some Himalayan glaciers advance, despite warming", by Alistar Doyle, accessed January 25, 2011

Montana's melting glaciers: The poster-child for climate change

As recently as 100 years ago, Montana's Glacier National Park had more than 150 glaciers throughout its more than one million acres.

In 2005 only 27 remained. Today the total is down to a just 25 and those that are left are mere remnants of their former frozen selves.

With warmer temperatures and changes to the water cycle, scientists predict Glacier National Park will be glacier-free by 2030.

Daniel Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) ecologist who works at the national park believes that even those estimates are too conservative and says the park's namesakes will be gone about ten years ahead of their predicted demise. Fagre has been conducting research in the national park since the early 1980s.

Fagre's current research reveals that temperatures in Glacier National Park have risen higher than was predicted in 1992. The Montana glaciers are now expected to be gone by 2020. And that will dramatically impact the park's rare and sensitive plants and animals.

"The glaciers have been around for the last seven thousand years," he told CNN, "and if we are going to lose them in the next 10 or 20 years that is a pretty radical shift."

The rapid melting of glaciers has led scientists to believe that mountains are more susceptible to global warming than the lowlands beneath them.

"Mountain ecosystems have been changing about twice as fast as the rest of the globe. We have had temperature increases that are two times greater than the average," said Fagre.

Many scientists are now concerned about the cascading effects on the landscape and the consequences for all species -- including humans.

"Many people are directly dependent on the water coming out of mountains and in the arid western United States that figure is much larger, it is about 85 percent," said Fagre.

"So even if you live a long ways a way you are tied to the water in mountains and so we have a lot of concerns of future climate change scenarios."

Fagre says mountains are the "water towers of the world" with 70 percent of the world's fresh water frozen in glaciers.

Glacier National Park

CNN traveled to the edge of Grinnell glacier that is at an altitude averaging 7,000 feet (2,100 meters) and was named after George Bird Grinnell, an early American conservationist and explorer.

"When George Grinnell came here in 1887 he described this place as being a thousand foot high in ice and this entire basin was filled to the mountaintop," said Fagre. "Now I stand beside a lake that is 65 meters or 187 feet deep." (Click on image at right for a larger image).

We could see chunks of ice falling off, and others just dripping away. Fagre bent down to show us what's underneath the thin edge of the glacier.

"Look under here and you can see there is a lot of mucky sauce stuff and this is a lot of the rock flour ground by the glacier because it has been dragging rocks across the underlying rock layer and rubbing those two together creating this very fine material," he said.

"Many people would not be impressed by this little dirty glacier that seems to be obviously falling apart, that has become very tiny and decrepit -- and people often think about glaciers as these beautiful white expansive, blue colors - but those are healthy glaciers and this one is not. This one is on its last legs."

In 1997, USGS Physical Scientist Lisa McKeon and Fagre(at left, setting up photography equipment) started the Repeat Photography Project at Glacier National Park tracking down old photographs of the park's glaciers taken by first explorers in the 1900s and comparing them with their own images. View the historical images here (will require Adobe Reader).

McKeon and other USGS scientists try to re-photograph the exact spot where the historic photograph was taken, though it's not always possible when the original photographer was standing on ice that is now long gone.

"If you look at these pictures, you cannot say they haven't changed over time. It's very obvious," says McKeon.

Glacier National Park is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year but soon the glaciers that gave the park its name will be gone.

"Glacier National Park has been the poster child park for climate change for a lot of people in the country and I think that there has been pretty sensational news about the glaciers disappearing in fairly short order," says Chas Cartwright, Glacier National Park Superintendent.

"There is a lot less water coming off the mountain. There are dramatic changes in vegetation. It begs the question: how is that going to impact wildlife in this park?"

Many of the plant and animal species that call the park home require cold water, meaning the ecosystem of the park may change dramatically when the glaciers are gone.

There is a general consensus that man is contributing to the planet's changing climate. Some skeptics remain, but Dan Fagre isn't one of them.

"I think on a global scale when you look at all the ice disappearing all around the world, there is no other explanation for that then climate change that is driven by people," he said.

What is beyond doubt is that whatever the causes magnificent and environmentally crucial glaciers around the world are retreating: a loss to nature and to the human species.

Source:
Cable Network News, "Montana's melting glaciers: The poster-child for climate change", accessed October 9, 2010
LA Times, "Glacier National Park's vanishing ice sheets", accessed October 9, 2010

ARGENTINA: Fighting to Save Glaciers as They Retreat

Argentina's glaciers, along with Chile's the most extensive of South America, manifest the damage caused by climate change, while they also face threats from mining and major transportation infrastructure projects.

A law to protect them has been postponed yet again. Glaciers are vast reserves of freshwater, vital for feeding rivers, lakes and underground water tables. But rising global temperatures are shrinking their ability to serve that function.

"Climate change is the main cause of glacier retraction, but also affecting them are the petroleum industry, large-scale mining, high-impact tourism and infrastructure projects," glaciologist Ricardo Villalba, director of the Argentine Institute of Snow and Glacier Research and Environmental Sciences (IANIGLA), stated.

From 1984 to 2004, glacier decline in eight areas studied averaged between 10 and 15 percent, he said. In some cases, the loss was greater, such as the Upsala glacier (right), in the southern province of Santa Cruz, which is shrinking rapidly. It is the second largest glacier in South America, with an area of approximately 870 square kilometers.

Other glaciers are more stable, and some are even growing, like Perito Moreno. Both feed Lake Argentino.

Experts from IANIGLA and environmental organisations are promoting a law to preserve these ice masses, which the Argentine Congress passed in 2008. But President Cristina Fernández vetoed it, saying the law was "excessive" in banning economic activities on or around the glaciers.

After that failure, the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, voted in August on a new text, which was to come up for debate in the Senate on Sep. 8, but the Senators decided to put it off until the end of the month.

The greatest resistance comes from lawmakers representing Argentina's western mining provinces, including San Juan and La Rioja.

The text of this new bill "is better" than the previous, in the opinion of activist Hernán Giardini, of Greenpeace Argentina, because it establishes "glaciers as a public good."

The proposed legislation "protects the resource, restricts activities that threaten the glaciers and requires an inventory with the information necessary for appropriate protection and monitoring" of the ice masses, Giardini said.

It also prohibits any activity that implies the "destruction or relocation" of glaciers, and particularly activities that involve the use of contaminating substances or which generate waste. And it establishes strict sanctions for violators.

The proposed legislation calls for the creation of a national glacier inventory, an essential tool that would be entrusted to the experts at IANIGLA. If the law is passed, the Institute would be given the authority to decide on every mining or infrastructure project.

Controversial projects like Pascua Lama -- an open-pit gold mine extending into both Chile and Argentina, run by the Canadian company Barrick Gold -- would be subject to audit by the Institute, and could be suspended if preservation of the glaciers is not guaranteed.

Pascua Lama (map at right) is located in the northern Chilean region of Atacama and the western Argentine province of San Juan.

With an estimated investment of 2 to 3 billion dollars, the company says it would exploit the mine for about 21 years. The company's website says the mine has proven reserves of 17.8 million ounces of gold and 718 million ounces of silver.

Construction has already begun at the mining site, and production is slated to begin in 2013. The approval process faced sharp resistance from farmers on the Chilean side.

On the Argentine side, environmentalists and farmers from the valley below are also opposed. They say the mine could accelerate the melting of the glaciers, and the cyanide used in processing the gold ore could contaminate the water that flows down to them.

Another initiative that has caused controversy is the proposed Agua Negra tunnel, in the Andean mountain pass of the same name. The tunnel will replace the existing Agua Negra pass (right), which crosses the Andes at an average altitude of 4,780 meters above sea level and is impassable because of snow during winter months. The tunnel will shave 44 km off the existing route and has been widely supported by road-freight companies.

The tunnel project was endorsed earlier this year by President Bachelet and her Argentine counterpart, Christina Fernandez de Kirchner. It will be fifth longest road tunnel in the world and will take 10 years to build. The tunnel would complete an inter-ocean route between the Chilean port of Coquimbo, on the Pacific, and the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, near the Atlantic.

The tunnel would be located in the central-western region of Cuyo, where the glacier decline is more critical than in the Patagonian Andes. Freshwater is already a scarce resource, states the study, "Climate Change: Dark Future for Glaciers," published in August 2009 by Greenpeace Argentina.

Farming and hydroelectric energy plants in that area depend on the water supplied by the glaciers.

Over the past decades, global warming and, in some areas, less-than-normal precipitation have caused nearly all glaciers of the Patagonian Andes (left) to shrink, according to the report.

Villalba said the glaciers are also crucial for protecting the high altitude ecosystems, providing electricity, and serving as tourist attractions.

One example is Los Glaciares National Park, (right) declared a Natural Heritage of Humanity site in 1981 by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

The Patagonian Ice Field is located in the park, feeding 47 large glaciers, and more than 200 smaller, independent glaciers.

The park is also home to the Upsala glacier and the majestic Perito Moreno, which in the first half of this year received more than 290,000 tourists. Visitors to the site provide 44 percent of all admission revenues to Argentina's national parks.

Source:
AlertNet,"ARGENTINA: Fighting to Save Glaciers as They Retreat", accessed September 21, 2010