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4/07/2015 6:42 am  #1


Study Forecasts 70% Loss of West Canada’s Glaciers

Study Forecasts 70% Loss of West Canada’s Glaciers


The glaciers of the Canadian West could shrink by 70 percent by 2100, according to new research that has implications for predicting glacier loss around the world.

The loss of mountain glaciers contributes to the rise in sea levels. As glaciers dwindle there could be also be pronounced effects on availability of water for aquatic creatures and for agriculture as well as water quality issues.

The report, published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, combines scientific disciplines to develop an unusually powerful method of predicting glacier loss, including high-resolution regional models of current glaciers and the physics of ice flow. The researchers then applied their findings to the range of predictions of warming over time from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Tourists walking along a stream originating from the Lower Grindelwald Glacier in Switzerland. The glacier once extended  through the gorge.Grindelwald Journal: In Swiss Alps, Glacial Melting Unglues MountainsMAY 29, 2013
Under the calculations in the paper, glaciers in Western Canada will shrink to less than 10 percent of the area they covered in 2005, and glaciers in the coastal regions will be reduced to about 30 percent of their 2005 size.

In an accompanying commentary, Andreas Vieli, a professor of geography at the University of Zurich, said the new paper’s analytical framework could “potentially be applied to a wide range of glacierized regions” around the world.

In an interview, Garry K. C. Clarke, the lead author of the study and an expert on glaciers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said creating a framework for other researchers was part of the goal of this work. “We can hand these tools to people who know what they’re doing in other parts of the world,” Dr. Clarke said.

He explained that the ice masses show the difference between the momentary influences of weather and the long-curve effects of climate change. “The glaciers don’t respond to weather; they respond to climate,” he said. “Last year’s bad winter is not going to save the glaciers. On average, climate is changing, and it’s not changing in ways that are good for glacier survival. And it’s not good for a lot of other things, including California water.”

He added that since the projections for the study were based on the climate panel’s range of predictions, it was heartening to find that the panel’s projections that took into account the possibility of strong measures to combat climate change showed glacial loss leveling off. “There are still some good-behavior rewards there,” he said. “We have to get at this now.”

Dr. Clarke said he had spent his career studying glaciers and was now focused on their disappearance. Comparing it to the study of dying languages or endangered animals, he said, “It’s not joyful work.”






http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/science/earth/study-forecasts-70-loss-of-west-canadas-glaciers.html?ref=world

 


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
 

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