Glacier Pics of the Pacific NW

[IanC]

for Old rocks

a sample

first pic is in 1947, second in 2015.

lots more at Mt. Baker glaciers disappearing? A response to the Seattle Times

 

[Old Rocks]

Alpine Glacier Mass Balance

Mass balance is the difference between the amount of snow and ice accumulation on the glacier and the amount of snow and ice ablation (melting and sublimation) lost from the glacier. Climate change causes variations in temperature and snowfall, changing mass balance. Changes in mass balance control a glacier's long term behavior. This is just like your bank account with accumulation being deposits and ablation being withdraws. A glacier with a sustained negative balance is out of equilibrium and will retreat. A glacier with a sustained positive balance is out of equilibrium and will advance. If a glacier still has a sustained negative balance after a period of significant retreat the glacier is likely in disequilibrium and will not survive, as it has no significant annual accumulation area. Above you will find a series of links exploring North Cascade, North American and Global glacier mass balance. In addition a pioneering means of mass balance forecasting is reviewed. The World Glacier Monitoring Service annually compiles the mass balance measurements from around the world and has found
the last 22 consecutive years to have a mean annual negative balance loss. In the North Cascades the glaciers the cumulative mass balance loss is 15.0 m of glacier thickness, 25-45% of their volume in the last 30 years.

My backyard, Ian. First trip up there in 1972. l have seen the recession up close and personal.

 

[Old Rocks]

You posted this Glacier Pics of the Pacific NW, then posted pictures of one glacier on Mount Baker. Your post would lead one to believe that all the glaciers in the PNW are doing the same, which is simply not happening. In fact, you are getting very good at lying by misdirection.

 

[Old Rocks]

http://www.newyorker.com/project/portfolio/mt-bakers-shrinking-glaciers

https://www.nichols.edu/departments/Glacier/mount baker hyp.9453.pdf

Mass balance loss ofMount Baker,Washington glaciers 1990–2010 Mauri Pelto1 * and Courtenay Brown2 1 Dept. of Environmental Science, Nichols College, Dudley MA 0157, USA 2 Department of Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada, V5A 1S6

Abstract:


Mount Baker, North Cascades, WA, has a current glacierized area of 38.6 km2 . From 1984 to 2010, the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project has monitored the annual mass balance (Ba), accumulation area ratio (AAR), terminus behaviour and longitudinal profiles of Mount Baker glaciers. The Ba on Rainbow, Easton and Sholes Glaciers from 1990 to 2010 averaged 0.52 m w.e. a1 (m a1 ). Terminus observations on nine principal Mount Baker glaciers, 1984–2009, indicate retreat ranging from 240 to 520 m, with a mean of 370 m or 14 m a1 . AAR observations on Rainbow, Sholes and Easton Glaciers for 1990–2010 indicate a mean AAR of 0.55 and a steady state AAR of 0.65. A comparison of Ba and AAR on these three glaciers yields a relationship that is used in combination with AAR observations made on all Mount Baker glaciers during 7 years to assess Mount Baker glacier mass balance. Utilizing the AAR–Ba relationship for the three glaciers yields a mean Ba of 0.55 m a1 for the 1990–2010 period, 0.03 m a1 higher than the measured mean Ba. The mean Ba based on the AAR–Ba relationship for the entire mountain from 1990 to 2010 is 0.57 m a1 . The product of the mean observed mass balance gradient determined from 11 000 surface mass balance measurements and glacier area in each 100-m elevation band on Mount Baker yields a Ba of 0.50 m a1 from 1990–2010 for the entire mountain. The median altitude of the three index glaciers is lower than that of all Mount Baker glaciers. Adjusting the balance gradient for this difference yields a mean Ba of 0.77 m a1 from 1990 to 2010. All but one estimate converge on a loss of 0.5 m a1 for Mount Baker from 1990 to 2010. This equates to an 11-m loss in glacier thickness, 12–20% of the entire 1990 volume of glaciers on Mount Baker.
Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
KEY WORDS glacier mass balance; North Cascades; accumulation area ratio; balance gradient

Once again, WUWT proves what liars they are. So, Ian, did you check the story before you posted? Are you a purposeful liar or a careless one?

 

[IanC]

Did YOU read the article?

 

[flacaltenn]

Large snow variances can apparently throw off mass balance observations. That's another reason I don't do ice.
To me --- the grounded leading edge of the glacier would be a better indicator...

The other issue you two gladiators have is that Ian is going back TWICE or FIVE times as far in time as the papers that OldieRocks cites...

DING !!! Round 2... Judges will score Round1 as a slight advantage to the skeptic team ..

 

[Crick]

Large snow variances can apparently throw off mass balance observations. That's another reason I don't do ice.
To me --- the grounded leading edge of the glacier would be a better indicator...

The other issue you two gladiators have is that Ian is going back TWICE or FIVE times as far in time as the papers that OldieRocks cites...

DING !!! Round 2... Judges will score Round1 as a slight advantage to the skeptic team ..

No they won't. Ian is flat out wrong.

 

[Old Rocks]

Large snow variances can apparently throw off mass balance observations. That's another reason I don't do ice.
To me --- the grounded leading edge of the glacier would be a better indicator...

The other issue you two gladiators have is that Ian is going back TWICE or FIVE times as far in time as the papers that OldieRocks cites...

DING !!! Round 2... Judges will score Round1 as a slight advantage to the skeptic team ..

Really?

Glacial Retreat | MountBakerExperience.com

Fountain and his colleagues use ground and aerial photography to analyze change in surface area of glaciers across the western U.S. They study the correlation between this data and changes in local, regional and global climate.

Fountain said the glaciers on Mt. Baker have lost an average of 25 percent of their surface area since 1900. Mt. Baker’s glaciers have fared better than those in the surrounding Cascade Range, most of which have lost closer to 50 percent of their surface area. At 10,781 feet, Mt. Baker stands much higher than the surrounding peaks, so it gets snowfall even when the surrounding peaks are getting rain. That high-elevation snowfall sustains Mt. Baker’s glaciers, but the line between snow and rain is moving up the mountain.

“Precipitation hasn’t really changed that much in the last 100 years,” he said. “What’s changed is air temperature. In the Pacific Northwest, snow is fairly warm compared to places like Utah, so we might have a ton of precipitation that falls as rain at the lower elevations, but as the regional temperature rises, the elevation at which rain turns to snow also rises. At the same time, summers are getting warmer, so glaciers are melting more each summer.”

Fountain pointed out that this level of melting is not unprecedented in our region. He said the glaciers on Mt. Baker were the same size or smaller than they are now in the late 1940s. Glaciers generally retreated from around 1900 until the 1950s, and actually advanced from the ’50s to the early ’80s as the climate cooled slightly, before receding again. There is evidence of rapid melting of the ice caps as the Earth warmed after the last Ice Age, and dozens of recorded advancements and recessions in the glacial record since then.

What’s different about this melting period, Fountain said, is the cause.

“In the past, the fingerprint of change has been natural, because humans weren’t around. But now, the change is human-caused.”

I asked Fountain how climate change would affect the future of skiing. “You know,” he said, “We’re on a runaway train. If you took humans away right now, the earth would still warm up for 100 years because of a lag effect. If we continue to burn fossil fuels at our current rate, we’re talking five or six degrees of warming. There wouldn’t be any more glaciers. Forget the ski industry – it’s gone. In general, wet places will get wetter, dry places will get dryer, but it’s hard to accurately predict the type of havoc that amount of warming would wreak on air currents and weather systems. When they get into the five to nine degree models, I just stop reading,” he said. “It’s too depressing.”

Now Ian, your author painted the scientists as if they were ignoring the earlier melt. They are not, but there are major differances between now and then.

 

[Old Rocks]

Getting back to the Cascades as a whole, since the title of the OP was not Mount Baker, but was Glacier Pics of the Pacific NW.

South Cascade Glacier

Figure 5. Cumulative net balance of South Cascade, Wolverine, and Gulkana Glaciers (Josberger and others, 2007). Densities of snow and ice differ considerably and before glacier-average thickness changes in each material can be summed to the net balance, the changes must be converted to a common basis. By custom, the common basis is "meters water equivalent" (MWEQ), which is the thickness of water that would result from melting a given thickness of snow or ice.

USGS Fact Sheet 2009–3046: Fifty-Year Record of Glacier Change Reveals Shifting Climate in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, USA

 

[Old Rocks]

Untitled Document

Recent glacier and climate variations in the Pacific Northwest

Stephen C. Porter

Quaternary Research Center, University of Washington




The rugged peaks of Washington's Cascade Range support more than 800 mountain glaciers, the longest and most voluminous of which descend the flanks of lofty dormant volcanoes. Unlike the glaciers of northwestern Europe, which lie close to human settlements and have been observed for hundreds of years, those in the Pacific Northwest were not visited until the second half of the last century, and most had not been seen or studied before the early decades of the 20th century.

Glaciers fluctuate in size in response to changes in their climatic environment, and their yearly changes in mass (i.e., their annual mass balance) is determined primarily by the amount of winter snowfall and the amount of summer melting. Small mountain glaciers in temperate latitudes tend to respond rapidly to climate variations. The glacier margin, or terminus, will advance or retreat depending on the glacier's recent mass balance history, which in turn reflects the recent pattern of climate variation.

Studies of glacier history throughout the world have shown that, following glacier recession at the end of the last glacial age, mountain glaciers expanded in size during the last three millennia, many reaching their greatest postglacial size during the last 700 years. This recent interval of glacier growth, widely referred to as the Little Ice Age, culminated in major glacier expansions during the early to middle 17th century and the early to middle 19th century. Since about 1850, glaciers worldwide have experienced fluctuating retreat, so that today we commonly see belts of sparsely vegetated deglaciated terrain beyond receding ice margins. Whereas the largest glaciers have retreated a mile or more during the past century, some small glaciers have disappeared entirely in recent decades in response to the general 20th century warming of the climate.

Those of us in the PNW that actually get out into the mountains have seen the recession of the glaciers up close and personal. Even from our cities, we can see the decadal shrinkage of the glaciers on our volcanic peaks.

 

[IanC]

Easterbrook's article is a response to exaggerated claims made in Seattle newspapers. Especially to cherrypicked time frames. I don't think anyone is denying that glaciers have been retreating for the last two centuries, well before man-made CO2, and from a highpoint in the LIA.

Even without man-made CO2 the glaciers would be shrinking, and even at the coldest point of the 20th Century there were articles bemoaning the loss of them. As usual, every change is blamed on CO2, even if its impact is minor compared to the natural influences.

I recommend people read Easterbrook's article to see if it matches the stories that are publicized. It is the usual scenario where the same evidence is used to come to very different conclusions depending on how you want to influence the public. Which side is closer to the truth? I don't know for sure but I do know that I have been lied to by the warmist camp on many occasions. Are the skeptics lying too? Perhaps. The evidence will win out in the long run. Hopefully before we have gone broke trying solutions that obviously have little chance to succeed.

 

[IanC]

Glacier retreat | Climate Sanity

Different place, another alternate view.