Glacial Mass Balance

The progressing widespread of melting glaciers allows rapid change in Earth’s climate change. The melting of glaciers has forced pressure on the ground, causing the land to bounce back from Earth’s

Earth has experienced many episodes of dramatic climate changes with different periods in earth history. There have been periods during which the entire planet has been covered in ice and at another time it has been scorchingly hot and dry. In this regards, earth has experienced at least three major periods of long- term frigid climate and ice ages interspersed with periods of warm climate. The last glacial period which current glaciers are the result of it, occurring during the last years of Pleistocene, from approximately 110,000 to 10,000 years age (Clayton, 1997). Indeed, glaciers present sensitive indicators of climate change and global warming and by estimating and monitoring the dynamic evolution of these ice masses, several

In Greenland and in the Arctic I was astonished to see that ancient glaciers are rapidly disappearing well ahead of scientific predictions. All that I have seen and learned on this journey has terrified me. For decades, scientists have struggled to get the same basic message across: global

For many years now, scientists have believed that our climate is changing. This climate change has caused water currents up north, near Antarctica to shift leading to warm waters taking the place of the usual cold arctic waters. Warm water melts the glaciers and causes the top of the glaciers to float off into the sea, allowing the warm water to melt even more glaciers. The extra glacier melting into our sea has caused the sea levels to raise and the

Economic growth is vital to sustain human life; however, the unsustainable consumption of natural resources to attain this demand is leading to self-destruction. The Earth is facing environmental changes, including climate changes, which are altering the Earth system. Significantly higher thermal expansion is inescapable if the increasing pollution by carbon dioxide emission continues relentlessly. One evidence of this change is global warming and its impact in the Arctic Ice. The critical role of the Arctic in the global climate system implies that Arctic Ice changes will have far-reaching connotations for, and feedbacks to, the entire Earth. Currently, the warning signs include: rapid diminishing of sea ice, increased mass

Glaciers have helped define the topography of earth for many years. A glacier is a large mass of ice that has been compacted of snow and ice for a long period of time. The ice age we will be focusing on is the Pleistocene era, which was “a period that began about 2.5 million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago” (513). This was the most recent ice age where it helped formed our present-day lands. During this time, ice covered about 19 million square miles which was about 1/3 of earth’s land surface (515). Many parts of all the continents were covered with ice and that had a great effect on our topography due to the glaciers it created.

The first argument examined on the man-made global warning side is that increasing greenhouse gases caused by human activities is causing directly observed climate changes. The first resulting climate change discussed is warming global surface temperature. There has been an increase in global surface temperature of 0.74 degrees C since the late 19th century. In the last 50 years alone the temperature has increased by 0.13 degrees C per decade. North America and Eurasia have seen the largest increase in warmth. However, some areas of the earth have actually cooled some this past century (Easterling & Karl, 2011, para6). After the mid 20th century 70% of the global land mass saw reduced diurnal temperatures. From 1979 to 2005 the maximum and minimum temperatures have shown no change; both indicate warming (Easterling & Karl, 2011, para10). Furthermore, borehole temperatures, snow cover, and glacier recession data all seem to agree with recent warming (Easterling & Karl, 2011, para11).

Mendenhall Glacier is the most recent environmental victim of a warmer planet. First measured in 1911, the glacier has receded by more than 2900 meters (Braasch, G. 2011). The marvelous thing about glaciers is that they can regenerate their mass through snowfall, but they can lose their mass due to sublimation, water evaporating from the ice, and melting. Sadly, this isn’t the case anymore as the summers out heat whatever the glaciers had tried to regenerate during the winters. Since 1980, glaciers on average have melted 17 meters of water (“NOAA Climate.gov”. 2017). When glaciers melt, the resulting water adds to overall volume of the ocean. According to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the global average of rising sea levels has been 3.4 millimeters a year since 1993 (“NOAA Climate.gov”. 2017). Before 1993, the average rise of sea level a year was only at

It has been observed through various researches that in the last century, average temperatures across the globe increased by over 1.3°F with an increase of more than two times in the Arctic. (Bates, Kundzewicz, Wu, & Palutikof, June 2008). The results of climate change can also be seen in changing precipitation patterns, increases in ocean temperatures, changes in the sea level, and acidity and melting of glaciers and sea ice (USEPA, 2014).

In the Ian Eisenman, Tapio Schneider, Davis Battisti, and Cecilia Bitz’s article “Consistent Changes in the Sea Ice Seasonal Cycle in Response to Global Warming”, published in Journal of Climate, authors describes and illustrates how global warming affect arctic ice. Authors explain that even though, changes in distribution in ice on both hemispheres of earth looks different it is only due to geological factors. However, in conclusion, the rate of withdrawal of the ice is drastic on both hemispheres, and it is mostly due to global warming.

Earth’s climate can be observed as an ever changing continuum throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, the end of the last ice age occurring about 11,700 years ago. With climate change being a seemingly characteristic and even beneficial quality of Earth (the end of the ice age did mark the beginning of the modern climate era fit to sustain human civilization after all) it may be easy to disregard the significance of the current period of climate change our planet is in. However, most of the climate changes that occurred before the one beginning around 1950 were attributed to variations in the Earth’s orbit that affect the amount of solar energy received by it. The current

Glaciers are one of the most fundamental phenomenon on the planet, and much of their purpose and impact on earth has been well documented and published. Ice sheets, Ice Caps and Glaciers trap nearly 90% of the world's fresh water, and are replenished by snowfall each year. Their existence on this planet dates back 650,000,000 years and yet they are always moving, always shifting and always melting. Before, human existence and even during the brief era of humans, ice dominated all of the earth's landmass and have regulated, created and altered many of the landscapes around the world.

Glacier retreat: Due to the warming of the atmosphere the glaciers are affected. The glacier is sifted downward or the glacier moved toward downhills due to the warming of the climate. This also causes the sea level to rise. The glacier of most of the mountain throughout the world is retreating. Most of the retreat of the glacier is due to the human caused temperature rise.

The South American Cryosphere is composed of both tropical and temperate ice masses. The Patagonian Icefields in the Southern Andes represent a major temperate ice mass in South America (Warren and Sudgen, 1993). Although retreat of glaciers in the Southern Andes have been documented earlier (Rigot et al. 2003; Lopez et al. 2010; Willis et al. 2012), glacier of Southern Andes have long been neglected for mass-balance measurements. Due to the remoteness, inaccessibility, and tough weather conditions in the Andes, field-based mass-balance studies are sparse (Aniya et al. 1996). Because glaciers in this region have not been as closely studied, there is an uncertainty in the estimation of the contribution of these glacier-melts to the sea level

One of the effects of global warming is the polar ice caps’ melting. Scientists have been researching and examining the polar ice caps for a long time and they have come to the conclusion that the thin ice sheets are slowly wasting away. They have also found out that Greenland’s glaciers are getting smaller and smaller. Places around the globe that use to be covered in ice and snow are now showing more green terrain as the years go on and as the winter months grow warmer. The polar ice caps are melting more and more due to higher global temperatures. This is really bad because the ice caps “reflect and help regulate the Earth’s temperatures.”