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AbruptSLR

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Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« on: April 06, 2015, 11:00:22 PM »
The linked articles discuss projections that Alberta and BC will lose between 60 and 80% of the volume of their glaciers, as compared to 2005, by 2100.

http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/04/07/01/49/canadian-glaciers-to-shrink-by-70-percent-by-2100

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/how-western-canada-glaciers-will-melt-away-1.3022242
« Last Edit: August 03, 2020, 09:36:13 PM by oren »
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Cate

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #1 on: September 19, 2016, 01:31:27 PM »
http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2016/09/16/climate-change-does-weird-things-to-canadas-arctic-glaciers-expert/

DRY CALVING, SLUSH FLOWS. etc:

University of Calgary geography professor Brian Moorman who studies glaciers in the Canadian territory of Nunavut says in the past few years he has seen things that has never seen before or that he would not have anticipated happening.

“Like large lakes forming on top of glaciers because melting water is being produced so fast that it can’t escape, or lakes that are dammed up by glaciers catastrophically draining out and completely drying out a river valley or a lake basin in a matter of a couple of days, losing millions of cubic metres of water,” Moorman said speaking on the phone from his office in Calgary.

Moorman is undertaking his research both in the field, studying the glaciers on Bylot Island in Nunavut, as well as working with the Canadian Space Agency, using satellite radar imagery to measure ice loss of glaciers through a process known as dry calving, a natural process when the front of the glacier breaks off and crumbles to the ground at the base of the glacier....

More info and full radio interview at link.

Thanks to dt and climatehawk over at The Scribbler for the link.






Cate

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #2 on: September 26, 2016, 12:32:47 AM »
http://blogs.agu.org/fromaglaciersperspective/2016/09/22/porcupine-glacier-bc-1-2km2-calving-event-marks-rapid-retreat/

"Porcupine Glacier is a 20-km long outlet glacier of an icefield in the Hoodoo Mountains of northern British Columbia that terminates in an expanding proglacial lake. During 2016 the glacier had a 1.2 sq km iceberg break off, leading to a retreat of 1.7 km in one year. This is an unusually large iceberg to calve off in a proglacial lake, the largest I have ever seen in British Columbia." 

--Mauri Pelto

See linked article for more info, images, etc.

Cate

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #3 on: September 26, 2016, 12:38:45 AM »
"From a Glacier's Perspective: Glacier Change in a World of Climate Change" is a blog of the AGU on the topic of glaciers worldwide.

The link shows all entries tagged "Canada glacier retreat" and includes studies from BC, Alberta, Yukon, Labrador, and Baffin back to Sept 2015.

http://blogs.agu.org/fromaglaciersperspective/category/canada-glacier-retreat/

oren

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #4 on: September 26, 2016, 07:17:34 AM »
Thanks for the interesting links Cate.

Cate

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2016, 12:31:43 PM »
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/breakage-of-monumental-bc-iceberg-quietly-sounds-climate-change-alarm/article32341873/

Globe & Mail report on the Porcupine Glacier calving outlined in #2 above. The interesting point is that it is explicitly linked to climate change.

"A massive chunk of ice – thought to be the largest iceberg to ever break off a glacier in Canada – fell into a lake in British Columbia this summer and no one noticed until a U.S. scientist saw it on a NASA photo."

Cate

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #6 on: February 15, 2017, 04:05:41 PM »
Thanks to Colorado Bob for the link, over on Robertscribbler. Posting here for reference.

https://news.uci.edu/research/canadian-glaciers-now-major-contributor-to-sea-level-change-uci-study-shows/

Irvine, Calif., Feb. 14, 2017 — Ice loss from Canada’s Arctic glaciers has transformed them into a major contributor to sea level change, new research by University of California, Irvine glaciologists has found.

From 2005 to 2015, surface melt off ice caps and glaciers of the Queen Elizabeth Islands grew by an astonishing 900 percent, from an average of three gigatons to 30 gigatons per year, according to results published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters...

The study provides the first long-term analysis of ice flow to the ocean, from 1991 to 2015....

The Canadian ice cap has glaciers on the move into the Arctic Ocean, Baffin Bay and Nares Strait. The researchers used satellite data and a regional climate model to tally the “balance” of total gain and loss each year, and the reasons why. Because of the huge number of glaciers terminating in area marine basins, they expected that discharge into the sea caused by tide water hitting approaching glacier fronts would be the primary cause.

In fact, they determined that until 2005, the ice loss was caused about equally by two factors: calving icebergs from glacier fronts into the ocean accounted for 52 percent, and melting on glacier surfaces exposed to air contributed 48 percent. But since then, as atmospheric temperatures have steadily climbed, surface melt now accounts for 90 percent...."



« Last Edit: February 15, 2017, 04:25:03 PM by Cate »

Cate

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #7 on: April 01, 2017, 12:03:32 AM »

Rick Aster

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #8 on: April 17, 2017, 06:39:10 PM »
Less glacial melt water has been flowing into the Bering Sea since the end of May 2016 after melt flow from the Kaskawulsh Glacier in southern Yukon changed direction. Previously water flowed north into the Slims River, which is now dry, and eventually to the Yukon River. A new melt water canyon in the glacier takes the water south to the Kaskawulsh River which goes to the Gulf of Alaska. The change in direction is possible because of glacial retreat, one mile in the last 100 years, according to a geologist. Study published in Nature Geoscience. Story by Brandie Weikle at CBC News: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-change-yukon-river-piracy-1.4070153

DrTskoul

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #9 on: April 17, 2017, 06:42:13 PM »
Cross posted from Weird Weather:

From NYTimes : Climate Change Reroutes a Yukon River in a Geological Instant

Quote
In the blink of a geological eye, climate change has helped reverse the flow of water melting from a glacier in Canada’s Yukon, a hijacking that scientists call “river piracy.”

This engaging term refers to one river capturing and diverting the flow of another. It occurred last spring at the Kaskawulsh Glacier, one of Canada’s largest, with a suddenness that startled scientists.

Much of the meltwater from the glacier normally flows to the north into the Bering Sea via the Slims and Yukon Rivers. A rapidly retreating and thinning glacier — accelerated by global warming — caused the water to redirect to the south, and into the Pacific Ocean.

Tor Bejnar

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #10 on: April 17, 2017, 09:00:43 PM »
Also from the NYTimes article, quoting Dr. Shugar:
Quote
“We may be surprised by what climate change has in store for us — and some of the effects might be much more rapid than we are expecting.”
The statement is a bit odd (i.e., "surprise" = "more rapid than we are expecting", duh), but it hits you coming and going.
Arctic ice is healthy for children and other living things because "we cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice"

1rover1

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #11 on: April 12, 2018, 01:59:54 AM »
https://www.thestar.com/edmonton/2018/04/11/cool-find-u-of-a-student-discovers-lakes-under-700-metres-of-ice.html

Interesting article about a new find of a hypersaline subglacial lake under the Devon Ice Cap in Nunavut, Canada.

The full published article is here:

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/4/eaar4353.full

1rover1

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #12 on: July 07, 2020, 06:12:35 AM »
The linked article discusses the Penny Ice Cap on Baffin Island. 

Overall, there has been a four‐fold increase in mass loss from Penny Ice Cap between 1995‐2000 (‐1.3 ± 0.7 Gt a‐1) and 2005‐2013 (‐5.4 ± 1.9 Gt a‐1). The rapid upglacier migration of the equilibrium line has left large areas of sub‐surface firn in the current ablation area, and has far outpaced the ice flow response, illustrating that the ice cap is not in equilibrium, and out of balance with the current climate.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019JF005440

1rover1

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #13 on: July 07, 2020, 06:50:29 AM »
A short news article regarding the acceleration, retreat, and increased calving of the Trinity and Wykeham glaciers on the eastern side of Ellesmere Island.  The terminus of these glaciers is a fiord that empties into Pikialasorsuaq, the North Water Polynya—an area of year-round open water that’s the largest of its kind in the Arctic. 

In 2000, these two glaciers produced 22 per cent of all of the icebergs in the Canadian Arctic. By 2019, they produced 65 per cent. 

nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/glaciers-that-feed-the-north-water-polynya-are-rapidly-retreating/



Freegrass

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #14 on: August 03, 2020, 05:00:24 PM »
Canadian ice caps disappear, confirming 2017 scientific prediction


This outline of the St. Patrick Bay ice caps, taken from the 2017 The Cryosphere.

The St. Patrick Bay ice caps on the Hazen Plateau of northeastern Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, have disappeared, according to NASA satellite imagery. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) scientists and colleagues predicted via a 2017 paper in The Cryosphere that the ice caps would melt out completely within the next five years, and recent images from NASA's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) have confirmed that this prediction was accurate.

Mark Serreze, director of NSIDC, Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, and lead author on the paper, first set foot on the St. Patrick Bay ice caps in 1982 as a young graduate student. He visited the ice caps with his advisor, Ray Bradley, of the University of Massachusetts.

"When I first visited those ice caps, they seemed like such a permanent fixture of the landscape," said Serreze. "To watch them die in less than 40 years just blows me away."

In 2017, scientists compared ASTER satellite data from July 2015 to vertical aerial photographs taken in August of 1959. They found that between 1959 and 2015, the ice caps had been reduced to only five percent of their former area, and shrank noticeably between 2014 and 2015 in response to the especially warm summer in 2015. The ice caps are absent from ASTER images taken on July 14, 2020.

The St. Patrick Bay ice caps were one-half of a group of small ice caps on the Hazen Plateau, which formed and likely attained their maximum extents during the Little Ice Age, perhaps several centuries ago. The Murray and Simmons ice caps, which make up the second half of the Hazen Plateau ice caps, are located at a higher elevation and are therefore faring better, though scientists predict that their demise is imminent as well.



"We've long known that as climate change takes hold, the effects would be especially pronounced in the Arctic," said Serreze. "But the death of those two little caps that I once knew so well has made climate change very personal. All that's left are some photographs and a lot of memories."

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-canadian-ice-caps-scientific.html
90% of the world is religious, but somehow "love thy neighbour" became "fuck thy neighbours", if they don't agree with your point of view.

WTF happened?

ArcticMelt2

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #15 on: August 03, 2020, 05:15:49 PM »
The ice caps are relatively small, but the height is really great.



In 2001, ice caps were expected to disappear by 2040-2050.

« Last Edit: August 03, 2020, 09:24:02 PM by ArcticMelt2 »

Tor Bejnar

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #16 on: August 03, 2020, 09:16:20 PM »
ice cap  ≡  a mass of ice that covers less than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi) of land area (usually covering a highland area).

glacier  ≡  a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight.

Ice caps, except on their edges (maybe), basically don't move much.
Arctic ice is healthy for children and other living things because "we cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice"

Freegrass

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Re: Canadian Glaciers
« Reply #17 on: August 03, 2020, 09:24:20 PM »
This is an ice cap.



 ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

Actually Oren told me to post that message here instead of the melting thread where I posted it first.

Maybe the title of this thread could change to Melting Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps?
90% of the world is religious, but somehow "love thy neighbour" became "fuck thy neighbours", if they don't agree with your point of view.

WTF happened?

oren

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #18 on: August 03, 2020, 09:37:20 PM »
A. I believe Tor's correction wasn't directed at you.
B. Title changed.

ArcticMelt2

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #19 on: August 03, 2020, 09:41:34 PM »
An example of how increased the rate of ice melting in the Canadian Arctic at an altitude of 800 meters above sea level.

You can imagine what happens to the sea ice, which is 800 meters below these ice caps.  :-\

Freegrass

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #20 on: August 03, 2020, 09:44:11 PM »
A. I believe Tor's correction wasn't directed at you.
Glaciers are the tears of an ice cap, right?

Quote
B. Title changed.
Right on! :)
90% of the world is religious, but somehow "love thy neighbour" became "fuck thy neighbours", if they don't agree with your point of view.

WTF happened?

ArcticMelt2

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #21 on: August 03, 2020, 09:52:52 PM »
The other two ice caps turned out to be more massive and tenacious.

https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/11/169/2017/tc-11-169-2017.pdf

gerontocrat

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #22 on: August 30, 2020, 08:53:26 PM »
This one is open access...

Glaciers melt, snowline rises, treeline rises, vegetation thickens.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66277-2
A century of high elevation ecosystem change in the Canadian Rocky Mountains





Historic and repeat photography examples of (A) treeline advance (yellow lines) with white lines showing demarcated segments used for analyses (image 38); (B) increases in tree density at the treeline ecotone with a specific location signified by the ‘*’ (image 2); and 3) shifts from krummholz to trees, and (D) example of repeat photograph and Google Earth digital elevation model (Image: Google, Maxar Technologies). Historic images courtesy of Library and Archives Canada. Repeat images courtesy of the Mountain Legacy Project (mountainlegacy.ca).
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kassy

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #23 on: September 01, 2021, 01:11:16 PM »
Scientists warn glacier in Canadian Rockies is slipping away before their eyes at unprecedented rate

A summer of unprecedented heat has not been kind to the iconic ice in the Canadian Rockies. According to researchers, glaciers are melting at a rate never seen before.


“It’s horrific to see this almost unrecognizable from one year ago, two years ago, let alone 10-20 years ago,“ said Dr. John Pomeroy, a hydrologist and director of Global Water Futures.

Pomeroy first stepped foot on Banff National Parks Peyto Glacier in 2008. He came to better understand the hydrology of the famous glacier. In the early 1900s, it once sprawled three and half kilometres further than it does today, down the valley resting near the turquoise water of Peyto Lake.

“During the heat wave in early July and late June, we were seeing 2/3 of ice melt per week. At that rate, we could lose seven metres of ice coming off this glacier this year, the biggest downward melt ever recorded,” said Pomeroy, who is also a professor with University of Saskatchewan.

“The tongue has retreated horizontally 200 metres in the last year, 10 times faster than the last half century of retreat,” Pomeroy said, adding he is “stunned and horrified.”

...

“A lot of the soot from the wildfires has landed on the glaciers and darkened them up…where it’s accumulative, the ice has melted faster than where it hasn’t.”

Peyto Glacier is at the headwaters to The North Saskatchewan River. Its snowpack and ice melt help maintain stream flows in rivers across the Prairie provinces.

Pomeroy said areas of rivers not fed by glacial melt are experiencing some of the lowest flow rates ever recorded. In contrast, streams that are fed by the glaciers have had normal to even higher than normal flow rates this summer.

But with that crucial source of water now in fast retreat, scientists are worried about the impacts downstream.

“Glacial melt contributes water when irrigators need it most on the Prairies, and irrigators and people in the agricultural sector there depends on mountain water,” said Dr. Robert Sanford, chair of water and climate security at United National University Institute for water.

“It’s not impossible to imagine if we are losing ice at the rate that Peyto Glacier is losing ice this year, our rivers would run dry in August and September,” conservationist Dr. Harvey Locke said.

...

https://globalnews.ca/news/8154343/canadian-rockies-glacier-melt/
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gerontocrat

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #24 on: September 01, 2021, 06:05:41 PM »
Scientists warn glacier in Canadian Rockies is slipping away before their eyes at unprecedented rate

“Glacial melt contributes water when irrigators need it most on the Prairies, and irrigators and people in the agricultural sector there depends on mountain water,” said Dr. Robert Sanford, chair of water and climate security at United National University Institute for water.

“It’s not impossible to imagine if we are losing ice at the rate that Peyto Glacier is losing ice this year, our rivers would run dry in August and September,” conservationist Dr. Harvey Locke said.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8154343/canadian-rockies-glacier-melt/
This year...
“It’s not impossible to imagine if we are losing ice at the rate that Peyto Glacier is losing ice this year, our rivers would run dry in August and September,”

A few years later....
“If we continue to lose ice at the rate that Peyto Glacier is losing ice this year, our rivers will run dry in August and September,”

A few years later....
“We lost so much ice that our rivers ran dry in August and September,”

Inevitable?
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
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kassy

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #25 on: September 02, 2021, 06:07:04 PM »
Highly likely since there will be more fires and more heat. Location:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banff_National_Park

Even if ice loss slows down it will become a thing eventually since the summer season is getting hotter too. It was covering 12 km2 in 2006 at 2-3 km above sea level (Demuth and Keller, 2006).
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kassy

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #26 on: January 26, 2022, 03:47:46 PM »
B.C. glaciers melting 7 times faster in past decade than previous years, UNBC study finds

Glaciers in British Columbia and Alberta have been melting an average of seven times faster over the past decade than in previous time periods, according to a new study from geologists at the University of Northern British Columbia.

PhD candidate Alexandre Bevington and professor Brian Menounos used new technology to conduct the study.

They fed more than 12,000 satellite images from Google Earth Engine to a computer that was able to automatically map the rate of retreat of glaciers between 1984 and 2010 — significant, because there are approximately 14,000 glaciers in the two provinces, Bevington said.

What they found confirmed other research: That a warming climate is causing glaciers to disappear faster than in the past.

Their paper, which will be published in the academic journal Remote Sensing of Environment, found the average rate of retreat between 2010 and 2020 was seven times faster than that recorded between 1984 and 2010. Smaller glaciers on Vancouver Island are shrinking even faster — 32 times faster between 2010 and 2020 than in the period from 1984 to 2010.

...

Bevington says given the accelerated rate of melting, glaciers could possibly disappear in about 70 years, which should serve as a climate change wake-up call to politicians and British Columbians.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/glacier-melt-climate-change-unbc-1.6327259
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kassy

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #27 on: May 17, 2022, 06:24:04 PM »
“We’re past the tipping point for the glaciers in the Canadian Rockies,” says John Pomeroy, professor and Canada Research Chair in water resources and climate change at the University of Saskatchewan.

Pomeroy says over the last few decades, almost all the world’s glaciers have shrunk and the rate of decline is accelerating.

“Even if somehow, magically, we’re able to stop global warming tomorrow and return the atmosphere to more normal CO2 concentrations, we would lose most of the Rockies’ glaciers.”

Hot weather like we experienced last summer doesn’t have an immediate impact on glaciers but will be seen in melt rates of the future.

Pomeroy believes the massive Columbia Icefield, located between Banff and Jasper, will survive past the end of the century.

He sees a less promising future for the Peyto Glacier, about 45 kilometres north of Lake Louise, which could all but disappear by 2030.

“The glaciers, as you can see from the highways, are probably finished. By mid-century, the Icefields Parkway, people may begin to wonder why it’s named that.”

...

High rate of melting
Warmer winters aren’t the only factor driving glacier melt.

A deep purple algae, likely linked to forest fires, has been collecting on Canadian glaciers over the last few decades. The algae looks like dark dust and causes the glacier to absorb solar energy, causing even more rapid melting.

“I went through my photographs in the 1970s and ‘80s just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming,” says Pomeroy.

“Glaciers were very, very white back then. And they’re not like that now.”

...

Pomeroy says the algae problem is still not fully understood but there is a connection between ice and fire.

After the severe fire season in 2018, glaciers remained dark well into 2020, he adds.

“The algae has colonized the glaciers because of the forest fires, soot, the organic matter, the carbon,” he says.

“Perhaps it occurred with the soot, perhaps they were always there, but they didn’t bloom as much because they didn’t have the food source before. But they certainly are now.”

...

What does all this mean for our water supply?

Kavanaugh says glaciers keep our rivers flowing when other water sources dry up, like late summer when the snowmelt is gone and rainfall is at its weakest.

“They carry us through the hottest months into the winter.”

During particularly hot and dry years — like last summer, for example — glacier-fed rivers can actually see higher-than-normal flow.

“Though the streams that relied on the snowpack and groundwater dropped to very, very low levels, the streams that were fed by glaciers — like the Athabasca River or the North Saskatchewan — had very high flows,” Pomeroy says

The next few decades could be marked by high flows in our glacial rivers, which will continue as long as the glaciers are voluminous enough to contribute a lot of water, Kavanaugh says.

“We might have a 20-year window of this much water and then it will start to fall off a cliff,” he says. “How much water is flowing through the river as a function of that time of year is going to start changing remarkably.”

As we see a change in precipitation from snow to rainfall, snowpacks will melt earlier, meaning streamflow will shift earlier.

“We can look a little bit south and see what happens in Montana and Idaho already as they’ve essentially lost their glaciers,” says Pomeroy.

“Things get very, very dry when they get into a drought period.”

...

lot more on:
https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/glacier-melt-is-past-the-tipping-point-in-the-canadian-rockies-and-thats-a-big-problem
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zenith

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #28 on: October 06, 2022, 09:10:29 PM »
Landslide caused by melting B.C. glacier created massive tsunami, destroyed salmon habitat: study
https://globalnews.ca/news/8723389/bc-glacier-landslide-study/
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kassy

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #29 on: September 23, 2023, 06:56:41 PM »
Researchers say the 12-month vertical melt-rate observed on the Athabasca Glacier earlier this month "blows out" the previous record high melt-rate.

"Over the last ten years this glacier's been melting downward at a rate of four to six metres a year," said John Pomeroy, who is the director for the University of Saskatchewan’s Centre for Hydrology. "This year, we have just short of nine metres of melt in the last 12 months, which blows the old record out by a tremendous amount, by two-and-a-half metres."

Pomeroy and his research team, who work out of the University of Saskatchewan’s Coldwater Lab in Canmore, completed the field observations September 14. They use a device called an ultrasonic depth sounder, which is attached to a long metal pole inserted deep into the glacial ice, to monitor both the melt-rate of the ice as well as snow accumulation and melt over the winter months.

According to Pomeroy, all that glacial water is running away from persistent above-average warmth.

"We had a very warm fall last year, it was still melting in September and October, and then it started melting this year in April and May," Pomeroy explained. "Banff had a record warm May, and then warm temperatures through June, July and August."

much more including lots of pictures:
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/weather/severe/record-nine-metres-of-melt-observed-on-albertas-athabasca-glacier
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

HapHazard

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Re: Canadian Glaciers and Ice Caps
« Reply #30 on: September 23, 2023, 07:21:58 PM »
Yeah, many of the glaciers around here which I'm familiar with simply don't look nearly the same as when I first moved out here 20 years ago, it's pretty crazy. (I drive past this glacier a few times each year)
If I call you out but go no further, the reason is Brandolini's law.