90% Of World's Glaciers Now In Retreat - Guardian UK

[hatrack]

Melting glaciers spell water crisis
Paul Brown
Thursday September 4, 2003

"Temperature changes and lack of snow are causing 90% of the world's glaciers to retreat and some to disappear completely, with potentially catastrohpic consequences for communities that rely on the meltwter for irrigation, hydroelectric schemes and drinking, glaciologists agreed yesterday.

EDIT

Only Scandanavian and Alaskan glaciers are holding their own or increasing. In both cases this is due to increased snowfall, also caused by climate change.

EDIT

In the Alps, where summer temperatures have risen by 2.1C since the 1970s, summer flows in glacier-fed rivers have doubled.

EDIT

Stephan Harrison of the Oxford University school of geography and environment said in Africa most glaciers would disappear completely in 20 years. A paper on the Ruwenzori mountain range, between Uganda and Congo, showed that the glaciers which feed the headwaters of the Nile were now so thin that they would soon disappear."

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1035130,00.html

[sandlapper]

1. How interesting ---

When fewer than 30% of the world's glaciers are even being monitored!

[bigtree]

2. I saw part of a story

that talked about the ancient flora that was uncovered by the receding glaciers. Is that possible?

[hatrack]

3. Very possible - fauna, too

I did a short walking tour of part of northern Iowa with an ecologist earlier this summer. Part of the terrain there is covered with "algitic talus slopes" - or, in English, rubble heaps in front of caves filled with ice.

The air blowing out from these crumbly slopes was so cold (35F, give or take) that plants whose native range was typically northern Quebec or the Northwest Territories flourished in these microscopic ranges.

Neater yet, there were species of tiny snails still living in these areas that were remnants from the last Ice Age in Iowa. Tiny critters, to be sure, but survivors from the age of mammoths and mastodons. Very interesting tour!

[aneerkoinos]

4. Fauna including

stone age men...

[bigtree]

5. Oh, wow!

Living fossils.

Hmm...cloned prehistoric plants.

[Atlant]

6. Oh shit! More Republican voters!

> Living fossils.

Oh shit! More Republican voters!

Atlant

[GreenGreenLimaBean]

7. 30% monitored???

Please provide your source????

[sandlapper]

9. Monitoring of glaciers

Sorry I didn't respond earlier LimaBean I didn't notice your post.

The following summary from the CO2 Science site is about as concise statement as I know of. The citations are included for your information.
Quote
The full story must begin with a clear recognition of just how few glacier data exist. Of the 160,000 glaciers presently in existence, only 67,000 (42%) have been inventoried to any degree (Kieffer et al., 2000); and there are only a tad over 200 glaciers for which mass balance data exist for but a single year (Braithwaite and Zhang, 2000). When the length of record increases to five years, this number drops to 115; and if both winter and summer mass balances are required, the number drops to 79. Furthermore, if ten years of record is used as a cutoff, only 42 glaciers qualify. This lack of glacial data, in the words of Braithwaite and Zhang, highlights "one of the most important problems for mass-balance glaciology" and demonstrates the "sad fact that many glacierized regions of the world remain unsampled, or only poorly sampled," suggesting that we really know very little about the true state of most of the world's glaciers.

Kieffer, H, et al, 2000. New eyes in the sky measure glaciers and ice sheets. EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 81: 265, 270-271.

Braithwaite, R.J. and Zhang, Y. 2000. Relationships between interannual variability of glacier mass balance and climate. Journal of Glaciology 45: 456-462.
/Quote

[GreenGreenLimaBean]

10. I believe 30% is more

than sufficient to provide a statistically valid sample size.

[zeaper]

11. Statistically:

This is only true if the 30 percent is a random sample. Reading between the lines of sandlappers post it sounds like the 30 percent of the glaciers are probably the ones that are the most easily accessible, probably not a random sample.

[TrogL]

8. I noticed this years ago

Visit the Athabasca glacier in the Colombia ice fields in Alberta Canada.

They have markers showing the retreat of the glacier year by year. You can see where it speeds up in years of heavy pollution and slows for light ones (eg. the depression)

[Memekiller]

12. For a good article on Conseravite disinformation campaign...

Here's a piece about how the oil industry has diliberately distorted the issue of global warming: http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2002-08-15/feature.html/1/index.html