New research from Glacier National Park, Montana, indicates that the park’s glaciers are disappearing at faster rate than previously believed. Dr. Dan Fagre, of the United States Geological Survey, has studied the glaciers and ecology of Glacier National Park since 1991, and is now suggesting that all glaciers in the national park will have disappeared by 2020.
In years previous, research indicated that glaciers throughout the park would disappear by 2030. But new research from Fagre’s office has accelerated that date by 10 years, and he now believes that the park, named for its glacial formations, will lose all of its glaciers by 2020.
These glaciers have been on the landscape for 7,000 years, he argues, and they are in danger of disappearing within 10 years. “Mountain alpine glaciers will disappear within current lifetimes.”
The focal glaciers in Dr. Fagre’s research are Sperry, Grinell and Swift Current Glaciers –all of which are located in Glacier National Park. His research focuses most intensively on these three while expending less time, due to limited resources, on several other park glaciers, including Chaney Glacier.
According to Dr. Fagre, more than a century ago, in 1850, approximately 150 glaciers existed in the park. In the 1960s and 70s, only 37 named glaciers remained. At present, Dr. Fagre says, the park is left with 25.
The Boundary asked whether the glaciers were disappearing entirely, or whether they had simply shrunk to a size wherein the ice formation could no longer be considered a “glacier”. Dr. Fagre suggested that many had shrunk, and were as a result too small to be considered glacial. He added however, that his research teams would determine this summer whether some old glacier formations had lost all their remaining ice.
Dr. Fagre’s research began under the auspices of the Climate Change in Mountain Eco-Systems Program in 1991, a program within the National Park Service that was later transferred to the USGS.
But what accounts for the major deadline change in melting glaciers? According to Dr. Fagre, the old models for melting glaciers were based on modeled data rather than hard data, and were published more than ten years ago. In that time period, studies have collected hard data, real data. Researchers found that the temperature data collected over the observation period was in fact hotter than the modeled data.
“They truly are disappearing faster,” he says.
The research in question employs a number of tools, and has considered both the total area covered by a glacier, and the changes in glacier volumes to establish its findings.
In the past, Dr. Fagre’s research teams have published a number of repeat photography shots of the national park’s glaciers. Two such photos, depicting Chaney Glacier, exist above this article. Dr. Fagre expects to photograph the park’s glaciers again this August. He says that all seasonal snow must melt before repeat photographs are taken, otherwise the seasonal snow would hide a glacier’s natural boundaries. In other words, snowfall through the colder months accumulates on, and around, a glacier and blurs the formation’s historic borders. Once seasonal snow melts, a glacier’s total area becomes visible to research crews.
Beyond considering a glacier’s total area, Dr. Fagre has also studied the total volume of a glacier, and uses his data to model glacial melting over time.
“We can calculate the water output of a glacier,” says Fagre. Researchers arrive on the glacial ice and plant ablation stakes. They probe the depths of the snow to understand ice density and volume. Dr. Fagre will also drill stakes in the glacier to determine precisely how much ice melts over the course of a season. In addition, researchers use precision GPS to determine glacial melt at the beginning and end of a season.
Dr. Fagre’s research may sound alarming: it suggests that dramatic changes in the landscape are imminent, and suggests “we will need to do some adapting,”
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