Glacial Melt

Functions and Discoveries

Glaciers protect the Earth in a number of ways. In addition to providing much of the Earth's drinkable water, they reflect approximately 80 percent of the sun's heat away from the Earth, resulting in cooler temperatures on land and in the oceans of the world. Without that reflection, temperatures rise, leading to heat waves such as the one experienced in Finland and northern Russia in July 1972 and in Denmark and the Netherlands in 1975 and 1976. Glaciers also absorb the Earth's toxins; and without that protection, poisons such as DDT could be released into the air.

Since 1980, the pace of glacial melt has accelerated significantly. In 1991, glacial melt became an international issue when two hikers traversing the paths of the Alps discovered Oetz, a Bronze Age man of approximately 45 years who had been frozen in glacial ice for 5,300 years. Eight years later, the body of another man believed to have lived between 1670 and 1850 was found at the edge of a receding glacier in Tatshenshini-Alsek Park in Canada. The natives of British Columbia named this 19 to 21 year-old man Kwaday Dan Ts'inchi (Long-Ago-Person-Found).

The Arctic area has proven to be extremely vulnerable to glacial melt. Some 70 percent of that ice is now first-year ice, and its depth has shrunk to around 60 inches. In summer 2008, scientists predicted a 50–50 chance of, for the first time in recorded history, the Arctic Sea melting if the period was unusually hot with cloud cover at a minimum. In some countries, such as Ecuador, glaciers have virtually disappeared, and citizens are experiencing insecure access to water. Economics plays a major part in Ecuador's limited ability to store water for public use.

Implications

Scientists began documenting extreme changes in the Earth's seasons between the 1960s and the 1980s, when various countries reported record cold, heat, and droughts. Since then, there has been substantial evidence that global warming is accelerating glacial melt. In Montana's Glacier National Park, some 100 glaciers have melted away since the turn of the 20th century. In [Page 244]Tanzania, home of the famous snows of Kilimanjaro, approximately 75 percent of the area's glaciers have retreated.

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