Intro
Glaciers have been around for millions of years and with the arrival of global warming there being threatened and challenged by warmer weather conditions and many of them have already melted and this has happened before but there has normally been a ice age and the glaciers just grow back but with the arrival of global warming the chance of a ice age has gotten much smaller and so has the chance of the glaciers that have melted to grow back or for new glaciers to form. For my global perspective I will be looking at the whitechuck glacier in Washington that from about 1970 to 2011 has retreated about 2 km and has lost half it's surface area. For my local perspective I will be doing the fox glacier which in just the last about 25 years has melted a fair distance about 400 meters is my best estimate and is retreating again and may not slow down or stop. For my national glacier I will be doing the tasman glacier which is melting at a rapid rate now has a large terminal lake in it and may not last much longer. glaciers all over the world are melting or have melted and with the glaciers melting this could be a warning that the arctic or antarctic could melt and that would have disastrous consequences with sea levels rising over 60 meters but everyone thinks the chance of it melting is very small but i bet a few hundred years ago people thought that glaciers wouldn’t melt away and many of them have gone now so who knows what the future could hold if we temperatures and CO2 levels keep rising future generations could be in deep trouble.
Global
The whitechuck glacier which is found in Washington has been retreating rapidly since the end of the "the little ice age" which was a period of colder weather but not a full blown ice a...
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...with the tour groups spending so much extra money making it safe the cost of going on this incredible glacier will go up and up until it is not worth going on it and this will impact the tourism and the glacier guides will probably stop and no one will be able to see this glacier which will be such a shame.
national for my national case study i will look at the tasman glacier located in mount cook national park and from 1990’s has retreated about 180 meters a year and now is retreating even faster up to 800+ meters a year and won't stay around for much longer, it already has a large terminal lake that in 1973 did not exist but now in 2008 and now has a water volume of 3.4 billion meters cubed which is absolutely huge. the tasman is new zealands longest glacier it is 27 km long is a huge glacier but this does not affect the rate that the glacier is melting and
University of Colorado, Boulder, August 11, 2003, NASA funds Colorado University at Boulder study of changes in Earth’s glacier systems in Ascribe Science News Service: pNa, p 1.
After embarking from present day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Washington first entered Butler County on November 30, 1753. Traveling north on an Indian trail, the first sign of the area’s cataclysmic past would have appeared out of place from the rolling hills typical of the Western Pennsylvanian landscape. Peering down into a valley over 400 feet deep, the mighty gorge was littered with enormous boulders, thus framing the Slippery Rock Creek. These relict boulders of rock types foreign to the area are known as “glacial erratics” and are indicative of the strength of the encroaching glacier. As defined by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, “Glacial erratics are stones and rocks that were transported by a glacier, and then left behind after the glacier melted. Erratics can be carried for hundreds of kilometers, and can range in size from pebbles to large boulders. Scientists sometimes use erratics to help determine ancient glacier movement.” (NSIDC, 2014)
Glaciers have drastically changed over time because on average, “glaciers worldwide have been losing mass since at least the 1970s”. The melting of glaciers has been contributing to the rise in sea level because the glaciers have been shrinking faster in the last decade. Three of the major glaciers in the us have shown an overall drop in mass since the 1950s and 1960s and an accelerated rate of decline in recent years. An ice cap covered Mt. Hood during the Ice Age, from about 1.8 million years ago to about 10,000 years ago. These ice caps covered the Oregon Cascades, a series of mountains in Oregon, with glaciers going down on the east and west sides of the range. These glaciers melted into smaller glaciers as the weather proceeded to get warmer...
Just imagine this rather frightening catastrophic rendition of events! A mile-high sheet of glacial ice again descends from the Arctic Circle onto the United States and soon every skyscraper in Seattle, Chicago and New York City is violently crushed and devastated during a 21st century three hundred and first cataclysmic ice invasion.
People are responsible for higher carbon dioxide atmosphere emissions, while the Earth is now into the Little Ice Age, or just behind it. These factors together cause many years discussions of the main sources of climate changes and the temperature increasing as a result of human been or natural changes and its consequences; even if its lead to the global warming, or to the Earth’s cooling. In their articles, “Global Warming Is Eroding Glacial Ice” by Andrew C. Revkin and “Global Warming Is Not a Threat to Polar Ice” by Philip Stott, both authors discuss these two theories (Revkin 340; Stott 344). Revkin is right that global warming is taking place. Significant increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is due to human activities combined with natural factors such as volcanic emissions and solar radiation – all together they lead to climate changes and temperatures rising. At the same time, other factors such as deforestation contribute to environmental changes for some glaciers not less than air pollution. However, during global warming not all regions of the planet are affected in the same way, local warming and cooling are both possible during these changes.
Firstly, there are copious requirements that must be adhered to before an ice age can transpire. The most integral pieces of these requirements are: the declination of earth temperature levels and formation of gigantic glaciers; where, gigantic glacier formation is dependent on temperature levels. In addition, gigantic glaciers and ice sheets cannot develop if global temperatures continue to increase. In fact, recent studies have shown that average global temperatures have augmented over the past century: “The coldest conditions of the last 560 years were between AD 1570 and 1730, and in the nineteenth century. Unusually warm conditions have prevailed since the 1920s, probably related to a relative absence of major explosive volcanic eruptions and higher levels of greenhouse gases"(Bradley & Jonest, 1993, p.1). As, the earth's temperature c...
The glaciers have been through a minimum of four glacial periods. They’ve been through the Little Ice age, which commenced around 4,000 years ago. Marks of retreating glacier ice are seen in the rock-strewn and sculpted peaks valleys. The land and bodies of water that the retreating ice has created a new display of animal and plant communities. Ice fields, expansive river and stream systems, and tidewater glaciers significantly determine the likelihood of animals and plants to
Before Lake Coeur d’Alene existed, the St. Joe River ran through the present lakebed northward and up through the Rathdrum Prairie before turning west and into the Spokane Valley. About 15,000 years ago, during the peak of the last glacial period, huge glaciers covered much of British Columbia. This ice, which was almost 4,000 feet thick, unimaginably covered all but the highest mountain peaks. The glacier slowly crept down into North Idaho, stopping just north of Coeur d’Alene (Wuerthner, 30, 32).
Firstly, the landscape around would be dramatically eroded. Whereas a glacier pushes out of the way objects in its path, and erodes the surrounding area through a combination of ablation, plucking and freeze-thaw, the glacier itself commonly hides the features it creates, but when the glacier melts, features such as cirques, horns, arêtes, hanging valleys and waterfalls can be seen. Also, the melt water would itself cut a small v-shape in the base of the U-shaped valley created by the glacier. The stones in the river, and deposition would cause this. Lateral and terminal moraines would also be created after the glacier deposits some of the rocks and dirt that it will have picked up as it moves.
Glacier melting has become very rapid in the European Alps since 1980, and 10 to 20% of the ice in the Alps was gone in less than two years. Half the amount of Europe's Alpine glaciers has vanished since 1850. Within the next hundred years, 50 % of those left, will as
The negative side of global warming is that it leads to melting of ice. The world's glaciers, especially Arctic glaciers are melting faster than new snow and ice can supplement them. During the melting of Arctic ice opens over the dark surface of the water or soil and balance change reflects less and absorb a greater amount of heat, therefore, large areas of ice melt rapidly (News, global warming). There is evidence, which will support this argument: scientists from the University of California in San Diego investigated satellite observation data for the Arctic for 1979-2011 years. Since the 1970s, the area covering of the ice has decreased by 40 % and the region has warmed up to 2 degrees (News global warming).It means, that global warming affects to the wildli...
First, Mr. Al Gore shows some global warming comparison pictures of places over several years. Some rivers become droughty, some snow mountains are melted, some glaciers retreat year by year. Some places depend on the melt water coming off the glaciers, so glaciers are very important. In the following years, because of global warming, many people
The polar regions are most affected and vulnerable to the warming temperatures because the poles are covered in ice. The world’s ice sheets are melting faster than ever and temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as anywhere else on Earth according to the NRDC. This will have a serious impact on people, wildlife and plants in that region. The National Climate Assessment has said that “By the year 2100, it 's estimated our oceans will be one to four feet higher, threatening coastal systems and low-lying areas, including entire island nations and the world 's largest cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Miami as well as Mumbai, Sydney, and Rio de Janeiro”. Polar bears are in great threat as the ice sheets melt because they use the ice to travel across the land and hunt. As the sea-ice platforms move further apart, the swimming conditions become more dangerous. The U.S Geological Survey done by the National Wildlife Federation predicts that by the year 2050, two thirds of all polar bears will disappear. Researcher Bill Fraser has tracked the Adelie penguins in Antarctica and reported the numbers have fallen from 32,000 to only 11,000 over the last 30
Glaciers have disappeared due to increasing in global temperatures because of which the water level had drastically increased and its causing flood all over the world