New naming contest for Glacier National Park announced! The name will be instated after the glacial melt. Officials say it’s not too soon to be thinking of new names; the glaciers might be gone within the next ten years. Okay, so there isn’t really a contest, but the recent loss of two glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park is causing a lot of people to sit up and say "uh-oh."
The area of the Rockies within Glacier Park was once home to around 150 glaciers; 37 of these were named. Today, the count is down to 25 named glaciers – and dwindling. We are seeing the same thing happening across the world, with around 90 percent of the world’s glaciers retreating and shrinking.
Glaciers are perennial rivers of ice on land, formed when winter snow fall accumulation is greater than what is lost during the summer melt and ablation or calving. Calving occurs when the glacier has little iceberg babies; pieces of the glacier break off and fall into the sea. Both calving and ablation are normal for healthy glaciers. As the glaciers move forward toward the sea, pieces naturally break off. In "healthy" glaciers there are cycles of shrinking and growing, but with recent climate change, shrinking is happening more rapidly than usual.
Not your average iceberg, the Hualcan glacier in Peru, the size of four soccer fields, recently broke off and dropped into a nearby lake, setting of a 75 foot tsunami. Even Fox News is attributing the break to climate change.
The movement of glaciers is what makes them glaciers. When snow accumulates over time, compacts, and turns to ice, the pressure this creates combined with gravity cause the glacier to flow outward and downward shaping the landscape as it goes. Glaciers also move due to meltwater beneath the glacier. As it moves down the mountain, the glacier actually picks up rocks and debris and carries it within the ice. Some of this sediment acts as an abrasive on the surface of the mountain. Some is dumped out the sides along the way, or at the bottom. As it moves, it dramatically carves the landscape.
Glaciers then naturally retreat. The two in Glacier National Park, however, retreated below the amount of mass needed for the glacier to move and to basically, be a glacier. This mass threshold is about 25 acres.
Glaciers store about 75 percent of the world’s freshwater, and the downstream ecosystems fed by glacial melt depend on it for survival. The nutrients the glacial movement releases are also important to the surrounding area.
According to USGS Research Ecologist Dan Fagre, glaciers “act as reservoirs, releasing cold water that’s a lifeline for aquatic species such as trout. They also keep the area wet and cool once the snow packs have all melted. Without them, temperatures in those basins will likely spike.”
Glaciers are literally records of climate change, as they trap air bubbles that contain atmospheric samples from thousands of years. Even though glacial retreat is normal, it is clear that they are now retreating at an unprecedented pace due to warmer global temperatures.
Source: BecauseAction.com
