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"Glaciers are dying at anything but a glacial pace"
Mauri Pelto has been auditing North Cascades glaciers for 33 years as a job for the National Academy of Sciences to audit these glaciers for 50 years.
His data has shown the impact of climate change here.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/33-years-later-glaciers-dying-at-anything-but-a-glacial-pace/
For the first couple decades, it was old-fashioned scientific legwork in almost total obscurity. Our glaciers were losing mass in total, and had been for decades though at relatively slow rates. But then around the late 1990s, it all took off.
The past three years, the rates of loss have been off the charts. Some glaciers have lost nearly 20 percent of their volume just since 2014, Pelto says. In total since he started, the glaciers have lost up to a third of what was there in 1984 — an average of 65 feet of thickness gone across all the North Cascades glaciers.
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“The fight about climate change is over, it seems to me,” Pelto says. “I don’t get anywhere near the pushback about whether it’s happening that I used to.”
~~~
Overall, our glaciers lost 5 to 10 percent of their volume last year alone — the largest one-year loss measured. This year it’s about a 3 to 5 percent loss. The last time the glaciers gained appreciable ice volume was 2011. They have lost volume in 23 of the years Pelto has been auditing them and gained it in 10. But the losses have overwhelmed the gains by more than seven to one.
The past three years, the rates of loss have been off the charts. Some glaciers have lost nearly 20 percent of their volume just since 2014, Pelto says. In total since he started, the glaciers have lost up to a third of what was there in 1984 — an average of 65 feet of thickness gone across all the North Cascades glaciers.
~~~
“The fight about climate change is over, it seems to me,” Pelto says. “I don’t get anywhere near the pushback about whether it’s happening that I used to.”
~~~
Overall, our glaciers lost 5 to 10 percent of their volume last year alone — the largest one-year loss measured. This year it’s about a 3 to 5 percent loss. The last time the glaciers gained appreciable ice volume was 2011. They have lost volume in 23 of the years Pelto has been auditing them and gained it in 10. But the losses have overwhelmed the gains by more than seven to one.
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Response to suffragette (Original post)
