Across the western United States, rising temperatures are causing glaciers to retreat to the point of disappearing. Around 300 glaciers have disappeared since the 1960s, and almost all others will shrink dramatically as the climate crisis continues to escalate, according to a new study. By the middle of the last century, more than 1,450 glaciers – large tongues of ice, snow and rock that move under their own weight and gravity – stretched across the mountains of the western United States, providing cold water for ecosystems and agriculture as they gradually melted. Some in California’s Sierra Nevada were formed a few thousand years ago, while others, like those in the Pacific Northwest, are remains from an even more remote era of the last ice age, which ended about 11,700 years ago. However, the long history of these perennial ice masses is quickly coming to an end due to global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels. New research found that the total area of glaciers in the western US has shrunk by a third since the 1960s, and there is evidence that this loss is accelerating as temperatures continue to rise. About 300 of these glaciers are functionally gone, meaning they have shrunk to the size of about two football fields and are no longer moving. After dominating mountaintops for thousands of years, hundreds of once-majestic glaciers have been reduced to sad little chunks of ice in just the span of time since the Beatles released their first album. “When I realized this I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a lot more than I thought,'” said Andrew Fountain, a geographer at Portland State University and lead author of the new study. Map of glacier loss in the western US. Photograph: The Guardian The largest glaciers in the US are still located in Alaska, but Fountain said he wanted to make the first proper inventory of the “unloved” glaciers that are closest to where people live, in the lower 48 states. The new research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used satellite data and aerial photographs to map how receding glaciers in six western U.S. states will disappear over the next half century, Fountain’s earlier work has found, and by the end of the century they will likely only exist, in a diminished state, on top of the highest mountains in the west, such as Mount Hood and Mount Rainier Glacier, located on Mount Baker in the US. Washington. Photos: James Wilbur Sandison/National Snow and Ice Data Center; Hassan Basagic/The Glacier RePhoto Project Composite: James Wilbur Sandison/National Snow and Ice Data Center; Hassan Basagic/“The sad conclusion is that we are seeing signs that glacier change is accelerating and I would say that many of them will be gone by the year 2100,” Fountain said. “In the summer they are melting more because it is warm. more heat and in winter they receive rain instead of snow, which does not nourish them. It’s a double whammy. There’s no good news about that.” Still, their retreat has been rapid enough to cause a sense of distress among locals, according to Fountain. “People like to know that glaciers are nearby, they hold them close to their hearts, and it’s worrying to see the mountains bare,” he said. “The loss of glaciers is also tangible evidence of shrinking snow cover, where much of our drinking water comes from, so it’s also a concern when it comes to drought.” This problem is not limited to North America. In places Like Europe and the Himalayas, scientists have documented the decline of glaciers as global warming has intensified, endangering crops and wildlife. “We are raising refrigerator temperatures, so ice is melting everywhere,” Fountain said. Glacier loss can be slowed by measures to reduce planet-warming emissions, he said, but the process of stopping or even restoring them could take centuries, if ever. Until then, glaciers will be at risk. from destabilizing suddenly and potentially disastrously, as when a catastrophic collapse of a glacier and bedrock along the Tibet-Nepal border in August killed at least 1,400 people, with thousands more still missing Mazama Glacier, located on Mount Adams in Washington. Photos: Harry F Reid/National Ice and Snow Data Center Hassan Basagic/The Glacier RePhoto Project. Composite: Harry F. Reid/National Snow and Ice Data Center; Hassan Basagic/The Glacier RePhoto Project “There are a whole host of dangers that we’re not prepared for, and they’re not just that the ice is gone but that the terrain is no longer stable,” said Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine. “We’ve seen it in Nepal, but also in the Alps, where the climbing season is getting shorter because it’s too dangerous. That’s something that worries me.” About 12.5 trillion tons of ice from the Greenland and Antarctic glaciers have melted since 1979, a major study found last month. This enormous amount of lost ice, enough to cover the entire continental United States 5 feet deep, has melted into three trillion gallons of water and raised global sea levels by about an inch over the past four decades. Even a small rise in sea level It’s getting worse, but it’s not too late, any step in the right direction matters. “We should change.” Top photos of Hayden Glacier in Oregon. Photographs: IC Russel/United States Geological Survey Photo Library; Hassan Basagic/The Glacier RePhoto Project
