Mother Nature (WRATH)

[BullNBear52]

Mapping 50 Years of Melting Ice in Glacier National Park
By NADJA POPOVICH MAY 24, 2017

Glacier National Park is losing its glaciers.

The flowing sheets of ice scattered throughout the Montana park shrank by more than a third between 1966 and 2015, according to new data from the United States Geological Survey and Portland State University in Oregon.

Using aerial and satellite imagery, researchers traced the footprints of 39 named glaciers in the park and surrounding national forest. They found that 10 had lost more than half their area over 50 years.

“One of the reasons we study glaciers is because they have a simple, visual and easily understood response to climate,” said Daniel Fagre, a U.S.G.S. research ecologist who led the study. “If it gets warmer or if they get less snow, they shrink.”

Glacier National Park’s eponymous ice formations have been around for more than 7,000 years, and have survived warmer and cooler periods. But they have been shrinking rapidly since the late 1800s, when North America emerged from the “Little Ice Age,” a period of regionally colder, snowier weather that lasted for roughly 400 years. (At its founding in 1910, the park had at least 150 glaciers, most of which are now gone.)

After the end of the Little Ice Age, glaciers across the Western United States, Canada and Europe lost ice as temperatures rebounded. But scientists have attributed more recent melting to human-caused global warming.

“With each decade that we go, more of what we see can be attributed to humans, and less to natural variation,” Dr. Fagre said.

Dr. Fagre noted that even under natural conditions, these small, vulnerable mountain glaciers would have lost ground over the past 50 years — but they would have eventually stabilized at a reduced size. Instead, the park is on track to lose its glaciers within a generation.

Source: U.S.G.S. and Portland State University. Grant and Stanton glaciers are in neighboring Flathead National Forest.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/24/climate/mapping-50-years-of-ice-loss-in-glacier-national-park.html?