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exit glacier melting

4 dead, suspect in custody in Mat-Su homicide investigation, Tracking COVID-19 in Alaska: 481 new cases and no deaths reported Monday, For Trump, 20 days of fantasy and failure, ‘It’s bad. All rights reserved. "It's striking to see the same process in the South and in the North.". Reporter Simon Montlake was fully expecting to be disappointed by Exit Glacier, and he was not disappointed. That is an "inherent consequence of glacial retreat everywhere," he said. There are plans to expand the study and analyze more old fish bones from a wider part of the Gulf of Alaska, he said. She was hiking with a family group on July 5 and taking mental notes. Reconstructing the more distant past requires analysis of data from the region's geology and tree rings. "Almost every glacial river in Alaska is carrying more water than it did 50 or 100 years ago because of the shrinking of the glaciers," Loso said. Mendenhall in the Tongass National Forest, a Juneau landmark and magnet for tourists and local outdoors enthusiasts, is shedding ice. He stared into the distance then turned back to the cameras. © 2020 Anchorage Daily News. The Park Service has a mass-balance monitoring program that takes measurements each spring and fall to compare the icefield's annual snow accumulations with annual melts. The more modern melt at Exit Glacier and nearby Paradise Glacier is adding to that condition, said co-author Mike Loso, a National Park Service glacier expert. Exit Glacier is a glacier derived from the Harding Icefield in the Kenai Mountains of Alaska and one of Kenai Fjords National Park's major attractions. The U.S. Geological Survey and researchers from the University of Alaska and University of Washington have crunched altitude data to calculate changes in the past half century at Exit and elsewhere. Alaska scientists recently studied this living agent of glacier melt. "They're phenomenal. To walk the path to the lookout, then, is to tread a timeline of climate change, passing markers of the glacier’s historic extent. “If you went to a place on a glacier and scraped the algae away, about 20 percent of the melting would go away,” said Roman Dial, a biologist at Alaska Pacific University. In 2016 it shrank by nearly 300 feet in a single year. (Yereth Rosen / Alaska Dispatch News), Hikers pause to take in a view of Exit Glacier from a spot a few miles into the Harding Icefield Trail. Decades ago, Seward teacher Dan Seavey was among the locals who honed his dog-sledding skills in the glacier's valley, sometimes driving dogs directly onto the ice. On the mile-long Exit Glacier trail, which once ended in a loop, the Park Service has had to make two significant extensions, adding a 540-foot spur in 2006 and a 420-foot extension of that in 2010. I breathe the cool air. If you have questions about your account, please While last year's retreat was the biggest one-year loss measured, Kim, the resources chief at the park, said the annual measurements only go back a decade; before then, measurements were made every few years. (Marc Lester / Alaska Dispatch News), The expanse of the Harding Icefield comes into view following a 4.1-mile hike up the Harding Icefield Trail on July 15 near Seward. Your subscription to We are seniors and enjoyed the ride and hike. Back on land and on the Exit Glacier road, the Park Service and U.S. Department of Transportation last year completed a makeover to cope with floods that had regularly closed off traffic in past years. It was visited by a U.S. president — Barack Obama, who spent part of his 2015 Alaska trip at the glacier's melting terminus. I’m thinking more about my son, age 6. Exit Glacier received its name as it is the preferred exit point for expeditions which have explored the Harding Icefield. Christian Science Monitor reporter Simon Montlake looks out on Exit Glacier on May 17 in Alaska's Kenai Fjords National Park. Rode with "Mean Gene" - very economical compared with the Cruise Ship excursions! (Marc Lester / Alaska Dispatch News). The finger that descends may be pulling back but it also seems to reach down, here at the edge of Alaska, the last frontier. Already, there is some disappointment at the end of the Exit Glacier trail. But it stands out for its location in an easily accessible national park, the in-your-face documentation of its retreat and its role as a real-time climate change laboratory. Each spring and fall, park workers go to the glacier to get detailed measurements of its terminus position. Exit Glacier is the sole glacier accessible by road in the park. At Aialik Bay, the finger of water fed by Kenai Fjords' Aialik Glacier and other glaciers, old fish bones have recorded the story of marine waters warming since the early Industrial Age. subscription yet. Exit Glacier, which the Park Service says got over 181,500 visitors last year, is not Alaska's only walk-up glacier, albeit with a walk that has been getting longer as the glacier shrivels. Today it’s a lovely spot. Latest book reviews, author interviews, and reading trends. You don’t have a Christian Science Monitor The swift retreat of Exit Glacier, in Alaska’s Kenai Mountains, offers a clear sign of how climate change can affect a region in a very short time. We Portage Glacier, one of multitudes of glaciers in Chugach National Forest, remains a big tourist draw even though visitors now have to take a boat ride across Portage Lake to see its face. "Clearly, we have a situation where the glacier is changing. With just a 10-to-15-minute drive out of Seward, you can hike right up to the Kenai Fjords National Park's Exit Glacier and experience the dense, blue ice while listening to it crackle. Land-terminating Alaska glaciers like Exit, though they make up only a tiny percentage of the world's ice, are significant contributors to global sea-level rise, and visitors to Kenai Fjords are able to see that process up close. The adjective glacial no longer applies, it seems. While glacial melt is swelling the volume in the creek and is making the area more watery in general, it turns out that the modern melt is likely not responsible for the sudden inundations that have forced road closures in recent years, a new study finds. Yereth Rosen was a longtime reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. Science Monitor has expired. Chemistry of the marine water is changing as well. unless you renew or The project, which cost about $3 million, raised the road and inserted culverts below it to try to keep rushing water out of vehicles' paths. Long-term changes are evident far downstream of the ice, an area getting new attention from scientists. A weekly digest of Monitor views and insightful commentary on major events. I’m hardly the first to make this journey and lament the lesson of Exit Glacier, of course. Moving up to 300 feet in a single year, the glacier’s retreat is marked each decade. The newly exposed landscape at the foot of Exit Glacier progresses from bare rock into temperate rainforest as plants reclaim the barren glacial till. SEWARD — A finger of ice spilling out of the Chugach Mountains marks Alaska's rapidly warming climate — almost literally. Tourists driving to the glacier can learn about its retreat from signposts along the road, which mark its previous reach. “That’s something we can clearly grasp. The sedimentary loads in the creek and river structures have yet to settle, and thus the water channels change. NPS Photo/ D Kurtz Approximately one quarter (4.6 million acres) of Alaska's glaciers exist within national parks. Isotope analysis for modern fish bones matched modern Gulf of Alaska temperature records, and the methodology will work for bones from past times prior to written temperature records, potentially as far back as 5,000 years ago, he said. "I'm shocked it changed this much," said Julie, with her husband and two daughters at the trail summit. Worth the time and effort to the Exit glacier. Highly recommend. What if they melt. A sign marks the location of Exit Glacier’s terminus 100 years ago along the trail to an overlook from the parking area. Most visitors arrive by car or as part of a guided tour, but it’s also possible to catch a shuttle from Seward to the glacier during the summer months. They're like little thermometers in the fish," he said. Exit's rapid changes have forced the Park Service to make frequent adjustments along the trail system. Isotope analysis of bones found from archaeological sites and of modern cod bones points to a temperature increase in that part of the Gulf of Alaska of 3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a study published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Sciences: Reports. "Most science that you're doing, you may be measuring inches, centimeters, millimeters," Kim said. Park visitors willing to make the arduous hike up to the base of Harding Icefield at about 3,500 feet in elevation can see evidence of melt at the mother of all Kenai Fjords glaciers. The swiftly melting glacier stands as a living monument to global warming. The study examined bones from nine individual fish, six from the archaeological sites and three from modern times. Information signs posted in the pavilion explain why the once-sweeping view is now obstructed, along with other effects of climate warming. Kim said. You're going to see the blue ice.'". The colder the temperature, the more that heavier isotopes are present. The shells' calcium counteracted the soil's acidity and the cod bones were perfectly preserved, down to the delicate rib bones, said Aron Crowell of the Smithsonian Institution, a co-author. In 2015, President Barack Obama stood at a lookout and enumerated the facts of glacial melting and rising sea levels. “The cruise-ship excursions, the Anchorage day-trippers, will they go elsewhere? On a long curve I pull over to take a final photo. When glaciers melt, because that water is stored on land, the runoff significantly increases the amount of water in the ocean, contributing to global sea level rise. A marker shows how far Exit Glacier has receded since 2005. The oxygen molecules in the fish ear bones, or otoliths, carry a record of life history. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. In August of 2011, a similar project was done from Squab Island, showing the changes of Aialik Glacier. "If you slice it, you can see growth rings, just like trees.". Since then it has been retreating, slowly at first, roughly 3 feet a year, based on soil and tree-ring analysis. Aerial photography and historic photographic records are also used to track the glacier's changes. One important trend detected: The glacier is now retreating in winter as well as in summer, a pattern that has been consistent since 2006, according to a park report that describes Exit's geologic history. Many park visitors are worried that the glacier will retreat too far for them to see it easily, according to surveys done by researchers at the University of Utah. "What we call flooding of that road is really the channels moving," said Janet Curran, a USGS hydrologist and lead author of the study. "We perceive it as flooding because the road's there.". Exit Glacier, a finger of cracked, blue-white ice that drops out of 700-square-mile Harding Icefield, some of it outside the park, is relatively small, only 14 square miles. She works for the Conservation Land Trust and is helping the Argentine government — which is coping with some of the same climate issues that face Alaska — expand its own national park system. Eklutna Glacier, source of Anchorage's drinking water and one of several glaciers in relatively accessible Chugach State Park, is well-studied and losing mass. The road to Exit Glacier is supposed to be open until 01-Nov but the parks department decided to close it sometime before 29-Oct for no reason. For repeat visitors, the changes are stark, said Sharon Kim, chief of resources at Kenai Fjords. Renee Shippey of Dallas, who visited Kenai Fjords in June and had been there in 2006 as well, was sorry that her granddaughter was unable to get the same close-up view of blue ice that was available 11 years ago. Exit Glacier is situated at the end of Exit Glacier Road (officially called Herman Leirer Road) about 13 miles (21 kilometers) outside Seward. One interpretative sign is titled Living Laboratory, a nod at the scientific value of studying glacier retreats. This is the edge of the Harding Icefield, which covers 300 square miles, not counting the 38 glaciers that descend from it. The presence of oxygen isotopes with the atomic weight of 18 rather than the more common 16 in the otoliths is a marker of cold, he said. It will take years and maybe decades for the channels to settle on a stable pattern, Curran said. The icefield has retreated over past decades but, more important, it has thinned, Kurtz said. A pavilion built in 1987 to give visitors a place to rest in the shade was originally situated to provide a good view of the glacier; now the view is of alders that hem the structure after springing up in ground uncovered by the glacier's retreat. What happens then to the park infrastructure built for visitors to a glacier that is creeping out of view, year by year?”. An expert monitoring a fast-moving melting glacier on the Italian side of the Mont Blanc mountain range says a small section has picked up speed and could break off in the coming days. From this distance, gazing up the open valley, I sense the immensity of the icefield. It has a family link to a pop star. President Barack Obama visited Exit Glacier in 2015. The approach to Exit Glacier, the most accessible of the 500 square miles of ancient ice covering Kenai Fjords National Park, is a timeline of retreat. There was no snow, no ice, reasonable temperatures but that didn't matter. I pass budding alder trees, then clamber up slate and gravel to reach a windswept vantage point. Curtain falls. A 2003 reportwas based on modeling a scenario of doubling pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 levels by 2030, which would have melted the park’s major glaciers – and presumably the minor ones, too – by 2030. House lights go up. The group used the glacier to exit the icefield, and the name stuck. Exit Glacier Nature Center. This is our second visit in three years. Here’s a look at what’s changing. Acidification, a threat to shell-bearing organisms and marine life that eat them, has been linked elsewhere to melting glaciers — in Prince William Sound, for example — as increased torrents of freshwater dilute the saltwater and the calcium in it, pushing pH levels lower and more acidic. But where the road is concerned, "It turns out to be of secondary importance at Exit Glacier.". The marker for 1917 is about a mile from the glacier’s current point.

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