The photo below I took this weekend on my way back from a station survey in the remote northestern corner of California. It shows Mount Shasta getting it’s first significant snow of this precipitation season here in California.
Our local progressive weekly recently did a story on Mount Shasta’s glaciers, which have been growing. This isn’t news, but what is news, is the conclusion that was drawn from the growth. Apparently the growth is now being viewed as a sign of “global warming” or “climate change” if you prefer. So now we have glaciers that shrink, glaciers that grow, and these both signal climate change. Thank goodness that has been cleared up.
Unfortunately, the writer and the USGS person both seem to be oblivious to the fact that glaciers are a much better proxy for precipitation than temperature, and that sublimation, not melting, is the primary agent in glacier shrinkage.
North State ice age
Global warming melts glaciers elsewhere, but not at Mount Shasta
By Christy Lochrie
This article was published on 10.09.08. Chico News and Review, here is an excerpt:
First, the good news: Mount Shasta’s seven glaciers are on the grow. The largest, Whitney Glacier, has averaged a 60-foot-a-year growth spree for the past 50 years, according to Dr. Slawek Tulaczyk, a professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.Now, the bad news: The 14,000-foot volcano’s glacier growth isn’t a reliable canary in a mineshaft when it comes to global warming woes. Read the rest of this entry »
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