Expository Essay: Glaciers And Climate Change
A glacier is a large mass of snow and ice that has accumulated over many years and is present year-round Glaciers begin to form when snow remains in the same area year-round, where enough snow accumulates to transform into ice. Most of the world's glacial ice is found in Antarctica and Greenland, but glaciers are found on nearly every continent, even Africa. In the United States, glaciers can be found in the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and throughout Alaska. A glacier flows naturally like a river, only much more slowly. At higher elevations, glaciers accumulate snow, which eventually becomes compressed into ice. At lower elevations, the river of ice naturally loses mass because
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There are several type of glaciers which are Mountain , Valley Piedmont ,Tidewater , Cirque , Rock glaciers and so on .Glaciers are the visible evidence of climate change in the world and directly related to climate. Climate change is a modification of long-term climate parameters in a region of the globe or on the Earth in its entirety. The notion of climate change is now associated with global warming that began around the world a few decades ago. Its length changes in response to climate change with time delay. Climate rules the glacier behavior and any change that happens in climate is reflected in the glacier. Glacier responds to this change in terms of mass balance, runoff, melting and length. This paper studies what happened in regards of climate change, the driving forces of this change and the effects of climate change on glaciers and it will be based on the video and others links . First , the climate change of the planet is now a certainty. Many observations attest to the rise of atmospheric and atmospheric oceans, widespread melting of snow and ice, and of sea-level rise. In particular, eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) are among the twelve warmest years never been recorded since the …show more content…
And the great glacier of Columbia iAlaska has retreated twelve kilometers in the last twenty years. In a few decades, there will be no more glaciers left in the American Glacier National Park.Based on the video , Alaska is a good illustration of climate change . For example, People of Alaska undergo warming before everyone else. The glaciers of Alaska have lost more than 3.5 million tons of water since 1959, which represents one billion Olympic swimming pools. The Alaska Muir Glacier, like many Alaska glaciers, has retreated and dramatically reduced since the 19th century. This pair of images in the video shows the continuous retreat of the glacier and thinning it in the second half of the 20th century. From 1941 to 2004, the front of the glacier retreated about seven miles while its thickness decreased by more than 2,625 feet, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Nevertheless, satellites give us a better understanding of how the ice cover of the Earth has changed in the recent past. The satellite era, from the 1970s onwards, has allowed us to see the acceleration of ice changes in places like Alaska, Greenland and Antarctica, where the loss of land ice contributes to the rise Of the sea
A glacier is a large mass of ice that flows very slowly. A glacier forms by the compression and/or crystallization of snow that has stayed in one place year round. Glaciers can be constructive and/or destructive. Glaciers can be constructive by leaving sediments behind, or destructive by gauging the earth's surface. Glaciers were once present in Minnesota, thousands of years ago, and as they retreated, they left behind large amounts of glacial meltwater and various landforms, still present today.
The Siberian tundra is basically melting away overtime, even though it has been frozen for tens of thousands of years. At such a fast rate it is speculated that it is influencing global warming. The landscape is changing fast. In the last three to four years, the underlying
Contrary to the direct approach used by Saukko, Ehrlich’s “Chronicles of Ice” is very descriptive. She clearly describes the connection between the glaciers and its importance int his world and to its inhabitants. In paragraph three she narrated that while she looked for a more intimate view of the glacier of Perito Moreno, there was a row of ice teeth which was bent sideways indicating basal movement. She even saw something that fall and that bring surprised to everyone. She narrated that “People come here to see only the falling and failings, not the power it takes for the glacier to stay unified. She wanted to tell the readers that nothing is permanent in this world. Glacier is impermanence as she claimed. Once it’s gone, all inhabitants
Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist, studied a glacier on Mount Baker, in Washington State. The glaciers are melting, as the planet becomes warmer. “At the rate it is losing mass, it won’t make it 50 years,” said Pelto. Glaciers from Mount Baker and the North Cascades are getting smaller. Over the past thirty years, seven glaciers have melted. An estimate was made that the 116 glaciers that they studied in Alaska have lost a total of 75 billion metric tons of ice. There were 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park in 1850. Now, there are only 25."They are losing volume at a faster rate than ever before," Pelto said. "If you cannot sustain a glacier at a place like this in the Lower 48 states, there is no hope."
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
A glacier is a large body of ice that moves slowly across land and are formed by there being a higher snow gain rather than a snow melt. Glaciers move by a small amount of ice melting and the glacier sliding. Glaciers can help and destroy the landscape in front of them but they can also shape the land into something amazing. Glaciers were once present in Minnesota thousands of years ago and played a massive role on the landscape we live on today, and as they melted they left behind large amounts of water and formations.
In 150 words, how do glaciers form, grow, and shrink throughout time? Cite any references used and provide a References page.
Our society’s current rate of pollution coupled with naturally occurring environmental changes are reshaping the world we are accustomed to. In the documentary Chasing Ice, The Extreme Ice Survey is dedicated to bringing photography and science together in an effort to illustrate humanities role in nature, concentrating primarily on glaciers. Since film and photography have been proven to have a greater lasting impact compared to reading statistics this team of scientist and journalist have banned together to shed light on a concept that is considered abstract in much of the world, climate change.
Even though some of the links could not found, I still learned some cool and disturbing facts about glaciers. For example, ice bergs are nicknamed "rivers of ice" because they constantly move like rivers but at a much slower pace. Also if the ice bergs keep melting at the rate that they are, sea levels will rise and cause major damage and cause natural disasters like, flooding. Also the freshwater that's stored within the ice bergs would mix into the saltwater and led to a very limited availability of freshwater. Global warming is a major factor in the melting of the ice bergs and it's up to man to get this problem under
When President Taft created Glacier National Park in 1910, it had about 150 glaciers. Since then, the number has decreased to less than 30, and those remaining have shrunk by two-thirds. Dr. Daniel Fagre (2015) predicts that within the next 30 years most if not all of the park's glaciers will melt. Glacier National Park is not the only place effected. The snow on Kilimanjaro has melted more than 80 percent since 1912. Glaciers at the Garhwal Himalaya in India are melting so fast that researchers believe that most central and eastern Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Greenlands coastal glaciers have melted to the point of no return. “These peripheral glaciers and ice caps can be thought of as colonies of ice that are in rapid decline,
A glacier occurs when the climate of an area is so cold that new snow does not completely melt each summer and more snow is added in the winter. After many winters the accumulation of this snow becomes compact and re-crystallizes, thus forming a glacier. Currently, glaciers cover about ten percent of the Earth's surface. Yet, in the past, glaciers covered much more land and were thousands of meters thick. (Tierney)
Glaciers are formed in places where there is adequate snowfall and cold temperatures; specifically, the area needs to have temperatures that are less than 32* F and more snow than is able to melt in the summer. Present-day, glaciers only form in high latitudes and high elevations. However, 14,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene Ice Age, Michigan was covered by a mile-and-half-mile deep glacier. Over thousands of years, the temperatures alternated from warm to cool, causing the glaciers to retreat and advance. As glaciers traveled this way, they took the path of least resistance. This caused the glaciers to move south from modern-day Canada, along the riverbeds that existed where the Great Lakes now
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).
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
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.