Glacier Conservation
Kevin Stauft
Environmental Systems and Human Health, MPH candidate 2023
Climate change is resulting in a consistent increase in glacier melt rates. As glaciers lose mass, we can observe quantifiable changes in average global temperature and sea level rise. The driving factors behind diminishing ice reserves left over from the last ice age are almost entirely climate change related, so the solutions are similarly oriented.
Explore what glaciers are, why we should care about them, and efforts to conserve them.
"A glacier is a large mass of snow and ice that has accumulated over many years and is present year-round. In the United States, glaciers can be found in the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and throughout Alaska. A glacier flows naturally like a river, only much more slowly. At higher elevations, glaciers accumulate snow, which eventually becomes compressed into ice. At lower elevations, the “river” of ice naturally loses mass because of melting and ice breaking off and floating away (iceberg calving) if the glacier ends in a lake or the ocean. When melting and calving are exactly balanced by new snow accumulation, a glacier is in equilibrium and its mass will neither increase nor decrease." (EPA, 2016)
Glaciers are classified by their size, location, and structure:
Valley Glaciers: As the name implies, these glaciers tend to form in valleys. They can often form a river of ice that can travel large distances off of the mountain (which is usually the source) and sometimes reach ocean.
Tidewater Glaciers: These are ocean front glaciers, which contribute small glaciers from time to time in a process called calving.
Piedmont Glaciers: This glacier forms when valley glaciers spill out onto a relatively flat terrain, where it pools. I like to call these blob glaciers.
Hanging Glaciers: These are glaciers that like to live on the edge. Literally. They can be found hanging off of cliffs or other scary places, usually a result of a retreating glacier that has left a gap underneath, or a spillover from a valley glacier.
Cirque Glaciers: These glaciers fill holes or basins and typically end up lake shaped. They tend to encompass a wide variety of shapes and sizes.
Ice Caps: They are usually found near the poles and can be thought of as ice sheets' little sister. Simply a smaller classification of ice sheets, which are still really big in my opinion, "covering less than 50,000 square kilometers (19,305 square miles). They form primarily in polar and sub-polar regions and are smaller than continental-scale ice sheets." (NSIDC, 2020)
There are quite a few classifications of glaciers that are worth mentioning (Ice Fields, Ice Streams, Ice Sheets, Ice Shelves), but the point in including all of these definitions is to highlight the fact that these formations are a significant factor when considering their potential to contribute to sea level rise.
Glacier Melt and Sea Level Rise
Putting aside the fact that these harbor a majority of the world's fresh water, glaciers could potentially raise sea levels to the point at which many island nations and coastal communities would be flooded, displacing millions of people. There are communities in Washington state (among others) already experiencing the reality of sea level rise displacement, having to move their entire town.
The sad reality is that there are many stories like this one, in which sea level rise driven by climate change has had negative societal impacts to the point of being an outright disaster. Here is a concerning statistic that ties this all back to why we should care a lot more about our glaciers:
"Glaciers distinct from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets cover an area of approximately 706,000 square kilometres globally, with an estimated total volume of 170,000 cubic kilometres, or 0.4 metres of potential sea-level-rise equivalent. Retreating and thinning glaciers are icons of climate change and affect regional runoff as well as global sea level." (Zemp, 2020)
A recent news story highlighting the urgency of glacier melt
There are many contributing factors to glacier melt. Generally, as the climate continues to warm we are observing less accumulation of snow and ice pack throughout our winters. If glaciers fail to maintain or replenish ice reservoirs, we will observe substantial sea level rise in the near future (within the next 100 years). One of the many problems with losing a substantial amount of ice every year is that as these glaciers decrease in size, they tend to melt faster and can reach a point at which recovery is no longer possible, which may translate to losing the entire glacier.
An additional method of glacier loss is demonstrated by this NASA Glacier Melt Animation:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-mission-takes-stock-of-earths-melting-land-ice
Current status of the problem
The main concern for the livelihood of these glaciers is the continued and sustained loss of ice, "On average, glaciers worldwide have been losing mass since at least the 1970s, which in turn has contributed to observed changes in sea level (see the Sea Level indicator). A longer measurement record from a smaller number of glaciers suggests that they have been shrinking since the 1950s. The rate at which glaciers are losing mass appears to have accelerated over roughly the last decade." (EPA, 2016)
'Reference glaciers' are the most studied and analyzed group of glaciers. "The four U.S. reference glaciers have shown an overall decline in mass balance since the 1950s and 1960s and an accelerated rate of decline in recent years. Year-to-year trends vary, with some glaciers gaining mass in certain years (for example, Wolverine Glacier during the 1980s), but the measurements clearly indicate a loss of glacier mass over time." (EPA, 2016)
As the warming trends emerge, we are observing close correlations with ice loss, "Trends for the four U.S. reference glaciers are consistent with the retreat of glaciers observed throughout the western United States, Alaska, and other parts of the world. Observations of glaciers losing mass are also consistent with warming trends in U.S. and global temperatures during this time period (see the U.S. and Global Temperature indicator)." (EPA, 2016)
Summary of the research
The research contained on this site comes from a variety of sources, but my favorite content comes from research undertaken by the EPA as well as the invaluable data included in The World Glacier Monitoring Service which deals with 'reference glaciers' and is explained best by their introduction:
"Glacier mass balance is the direct and undelayed response to atmospheric climate change and hence is among the essential variables required for climate system monitoring. Glacier melt contributes to runoff and has been recognized as one of the largest non-steric contributor to sea-level rise. With the reference glaciers, the WGMS aims at providing a reliable and well documented sample of globally distributed long-term observation series to document the impact of climate change on glacier mass-balance. The reference glaciers have more than 30 years of ongoing glaciological mass-balance measurements. As an essential climate variable, these glaciers build the backbone of the observational network of the WGMS within the Global Climate Observation System in support of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change." (WGMS, 2021)
Rays of Light
The proposed solutions come in the form of conservation and occasionally restoration. The main focus that has been adopted by the majority of glacier conservationists is centered on climate change. Climate change is the driving force behind ice loss and the main solutions being brought forward to help are tied directly to national commitments to tackling their own issues (climate action plans, for example).
Along with large political agreements, there is an army of scientists out there collecting data and proposing solutions every day and I would like to pay special attention to a ray of light that has brought this issue into the forefront of contemporary environmental research... that's right, you guessed it. It's the WORLD GLACIER MONITERING SERVICE! The WGMS provides a wonderful amount of data in a few easy to use and super convenient methods, one of which is an interactive display of glacier fluctuations that is really cool: https://wgms.ch/fogbrowser/. They are working directly with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to help identify and solve the threats facing our world's supply of ice.
Along with the wonderful data collection happening in the aforementioned resource, I want to end your scholastic journey with another ray of light that has landed a coveted spot in the center of climate change. Extreme E is a movement that is getting people excited about being a part of the resistance against climate change, specifically fossil fuels. They race electric vehicles around the world and highlight a specific threat to our environmental integrity, this one being targeted at glaciers. I cannot stress enough how important this program is to bringing attention to the existential threat that has the potential destroy life as we know it.
Here I am, on one of the glaciers of Mt. Hood.
This is a great image from the National Park Service that shows a top-down view of the glacier complex of Mt. Hood.
References:
National Snow and Ice Data Center. What Types of Glaciers are There? (March, 2020). https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/glaciers/questions/types.html
Zemp, M., Huss, M., Thibert, E. et al. Author Correction: Global glacier mass changes and their contributions to sea-level rise from 1961 to 2016. Nature 577, E9 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1889-5
NASA. How a Glacier Melts. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-mission-takes-stock-of-earths-melting-land-ice
EPA. Climate Change Indicators: Glaciers. (2021). https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-glaciers
WGMS. World Glacier Monitoring Service. (2021). https://wgms.ch/products_ref_glaciers/
Ian Austen, Vjosa Isai. Vancouver is Marooned by Flooding and Besieged Again by Climate Change. (Nov, 2021). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/21/canada-flooding-climate-change.html?smid=url-share
Photo: https://avopix.com/photo/422449-mountain-snow-glacier