By Steven Goddard
Now that Arctic ice area is normal, Antarctic ice area is normal, sea level rise is failing to accelerate, temperatures are below all of Hansen’s scenarios, and the IPCC has proven itself to be untrustworthy – where can the CAGW religion go? Simple … Montana!
Glacier National Park Loses Two More Glaciers Due To Global Warming
According to Dan Fagre if the melting continues at its present rate then towards the end of another decade therewould be no more glaciers left in the Glacier Park. The glaciers of the park have been melting since 1850. The Glacier National Park at the beginning boasted of 150 glaciers of which 37 glaciers were eventually named.
You can’t currently get into much of Glacier National Park because there is too much snow, but if you could you would see something like this.
USPS Photo
Later in the year you would see this :
USPS Photo
Note the steep sided cliffs, formed by glaciers thousands of feet deep. Is it possible that glaciers thousands of feet thick melted since 1850, as the news stories claim? Of course not. The USGS has a good article titled “History of Glaciers in Glacier National Park” :
The history of glaciation within current Glacier National Park boundaries spans centuries of glacial growth and recession, carving the features we see today.
They suggest that the current glaciers mainly formed during the LIA (Little Ice Age)
These modest glaciers varied in size, tracking climatic changes, but did not grow to their Holocene maximum size until the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA) around A.D. 1850. While they may not have formed in their entirety during the LIA, their maximum perimeters can be documented through mapping of lateral and terminal moraines.
The size of the glaciers in 1850 was an anomaly during the Holocene :
Climate reconstructions representative of the Glacier National Park region extend back multiple centuries and show numerous long-duration drought and wet periods that influenced the mass balance of glaciers (Pederson et al. 2004). Of particular note was an 80-year period (~1770-1840) of cool, wet summers and above-average winter snowfall that led to a rapid growth of glaciers just prior to the end of the LIA. Thus, in the context of the entire Holocene, the size of glaciers at the end of the LIA was an anomaly of sorts. In fact, the large extent of ice coverage removed most of the evidence of earlier glacier positions by overriding terminal and lateral moraines.
The current glaciers started to recede long before the invention of the SUV.
Tree-ring based climate records and historic photographs indicate the initiation of frontal recession and ice mass thinning between A.D. 1860 and 1880.
“Dramatic recession” occurred between 1917 and 1941. This was before the invention of the Hummer and the Soccer Mom. Hansen wasn’t even born yet.
The coupling of hot, dry summers with substantial decreases in winter snowpack (~30% of normal) produced dramatic recession rates as high as 100 m/yr from A.D. 1917-1941 (Pederson et al. 2004). These multidecadal episodes have substantially impacted the mass balance of glaciers since A.D. 1900.
Summer temperatures in Montana have not changed for over the past 80 years. Summer is when the snow melts.
NCDC Montana Summer temperatures since 1930
Winter precipitation has not changed in Montana since 1930. Winter is when the snow falls.
NCDC Montana Winter Precipitation
Conclusion: there is little if any evidence tying the changes in Montana glaciers to CO2. Glaciers were a mile deep there during the last ice age, and have been receding and growing in cycles ever since. They may have been completely gone after the MWP and reformed during the LIA. Once again, climate alarmists have chosen a flawed poster child.
This pattern is similar to what was seen at Glacier Bay, Alaska, where most of the glacial melt occurred between 1850 and 1900.
USGS map of glacial retreat at Glacier Bay.
Montana is the location of the latest CAGW pilgrimage, after Copenhagen got snowed out. Where next?
They may have been completely gone after the MWP and reformed during the LIA.
The Blackfeet Indians talk about this:
“……Yellow Bear said that the glaciers in the park nearly ‘vanished’ 1,000 years ago during an extremely warm period with very little snow. The ‘peak’ of the number and size of the glaciers occurred during the 40-year period from 1710-1750……”
http://www.longrangeweather.com/ArticleArchives/BlackfeetIndians.htm
Now that Arctic ice area is normal
It’s 50 thousand square kilometers below normal (as of today – 13/04/2010).
http://i1006.photobucket.com/albums/af185/barryschwarz/NHseaicearea13042010.png?t=1271082230
Antarctic ice area is normal
It’s 90 thousand square kilometers below normal (as of today – 13/04/2010).
http://i1006.photobucket.com/albums/af185/barryschwarz/SHseaicearea13042010.png?t=1271082170
sea level rise is failing to accelerate
No time frame given. It’s accelerated over the last 170 years, particularly in the last 50.
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/images/fig_start.jpg
temperatures are below all of Hansen’s scenarios
I don’t think that’s true for the C scenario. In any case, temps are within the AR4 range of models run from 1990.
Breaking news: The global temperature, which allegedly started cooling in 2002, starting warming again from 2006. From 2008 it warmed even more dramatically.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/uah/plot/uah/from:2002/trend/plot/uah/from:2006/trend/plot/uah/from:2008/trend
I grew up 50 miles to the east of GNP. Every spring they begin plowing the Going to The Sun highway. Nothing new here… even in drought, warm years. I find this post misleading in many ways. Not the least, of which, is the plowing of wind drift snow. This year the snowpack across Montana is anywhere from 50-70% of normal. Not good! The pine beetles are killing even greater swaths of trees that are unable to produce sufficient sap to keep them out. Not good!
As to the other claims:
“Winter precipitation has not changed in Montana since 1930. ”
I ran the chart maker and came up with a different result. Both the “actual” and “trend” are down.
“Summer temperatures in Montana have not changed for over the past 80 years.” Again, when I ran the temperature for both summer and winter, the trend was up.
To me winter temperature is more important than summer to track when it comes to glaciers.
In this video Joe Bastardi talks about glaciers advancing. He is debating a woman who is a member of The Union of Concerned Scientists. Don’t let that title fool you. The Union of Concerned Scientists is not all scientists. It is an environmental organization. And not all members are scientists. The woman he is debating apparently is. Their debate is in the last four minutes of the ten minute video.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/269929/april-06-2010/science-catfight—joe-bastardi-vs–brenda-ekwurzel
barry (07:32:46) :
barry,
What was Arctic and Antarctic ice like during the Medieval Warm Period? What were sea levels like then?
“The trend from 1895 to 2010 is a significant one, +0.10F/decade.”
So the trend from 1930 to 2010 is small. The trend from 1895 to 2010 is apparently three times as large.
So a large increase in temperature trend due to warming from 1895 to 1930 is PROOF of ‘global climate change chaos’?
How many SUVs were there in 1930?
Craig Moore (07:37:06) :
The storm track earlier in the winter was south. New Mexico and Arizona have up to 1000% of normal snow pack.
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/snotelanom/snotelbasin
Montana is forecast to get up to 600% of normal precipitation over the next two weeks, as the storm track has moved north. What do you think that will do to the snow pack?
http://wxmaps.org/pix/prec1.html
One theory about ice ages is that they are caused by warm winters and cool summers. Did you live in Montana between 1917 and 1941?
Those mountains look like a great place for wind turbines…..
IanM
barry (07:32:46) :
Arctic ice area is above normal.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
GISS vs. Hansen A, B, C
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddw82wws_605pw244zfr
I have traveled to GNP many times starting in the ’50’s when Grinnell was 200 ft thicker than it is today. The last walk up there I took was guided by a park ranger who taught winters in NH and worked summers in GNP. In her explanation she told us that the Glaciers had likely melted completely 9 thousand years ago and varied over the interglacial period. She also told us that the park was not originally named Glacier because of presence of glaciers but rather because the glaciers had carved the distinctive circs out of the moutains. Those beautifully horned peaks and walls carved so thin that in places there are holes that you see light shine through after sunset brought the travellers and conservationists. There are many references to AGW around the park, but our Park Ranger guide was pleasantly knowledgeable and objective about it.
barry (07:32:46) :
GISS is below scenario C, but even so – scenario C isn’t relevant. CO2 emissions have increased at the high end. We should be looking at scenario A or B, not C.
For those who wish to see:
http://www.nps.gov/glac/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm
Glacier NP webcams page.
The only thing that those two glaciers “disappeared” from was a list…
50 years ago, those glaciers covered a whopping 40 acres… Now they cover just under 25 acres. 25.01 acres is a glacier… 24.99 acres is an ice field.
It’s funny how when Creationists say that God created the Earth in its present form 6,000 years ago, they are ridiculed. But, when an ecologist says something even more moronic, the scientifically illiterate lay public just accept it as gospel…
Real scientists (as opposed to ecologists) have no idea what the GNP glacial configuration looked like before the late 1700’s. The most likely scenario is that these alpine glaciers formed after the Holocene Climate Optimum (~7,000 years ago); however the evidence of their extent prior to 1770 is unknown because the older terminal and lateral moraines were destroyed by rapid growth of the glaciers over a brief period of time…
Now… If the reporters had talked to the USGS instead of an ecologist, they might have learned this…
Had the ecologist been around in 1941, he would have been Chicken Little-ing just as much as he is now.
One can only imagine the ecological Chicken Little-ing that would have occurred when the href =http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/images/loopglac.gif> Pleistocene ended.
One can only imagine the ecological Chicken Little-ing that would have occurred when the Pleistocene ended.
Steve Goddard (07:59:21)–
We’ll see. But that doesn’t rehabilitate your misrepresenting the facts about GNP and Montana. There is much fear by those that live by the water drawn from the Marias River and its tributaries are in for a severe struggle this summer.
By the way, the snowpack on Big Mountain is way down this year, only about 80″ at the top. See: http://skiwhitefish.com/webcams.php
In an average year snow at this time would be from 120 to 130″. The view from the North Summit cam looks towards GNP.
Please delete my two previous attempts at fixing a typo…
One can only imagine the [I]ecological Chicken Little-ing[/I] that would have occurred when the Pleistocene ended.
Here is an RWIS camera looking west towards East Glacier. http://rwis.mdt.mt.gov/scanweb/swframe.asp?Pageid=RPUStatus&Units=English&Groupid=629000&Siteid=629002&DisplayClass=Java&SenType=All;
A bit of a spring snow snit. Nothing new.
Perhaps when the last GNP glacier goes, it could be renamed LIA NP in commemoration of the LIA glaciers that were once there?
David Middleton (08:39:35)–
There is a Licken Chittle in evey pod.
Arctic and Alpine Research, Vol. 13, No. 2, 1981, pp. 183-196
THE LATE-NEOGLACIAL HISTORIES OF THE AGASSIZ AND JACKSON GLACIERS, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, MONTANA
Paul E. Carrara and RobertG. McGimsey
U.S. Geological Survey
ABSTRACT
“Twenty-one tree-ring stations, totaling 116 trees, were sampled at various localities within the forest trimlines fronting the Agassiz and Jackson glaciers, Glacier Natinal Park, Montana. Tree ages within these zones became progressively younger from the region of the maximum late Neo-glacial position to the bases of the bedrock slopes on which these glaciers are now confined. The age of the oldest tree plus 15 yr was used to estimate the date of glacier withdrawal from a given station. It was found that both the Agassiz and Jackson glaciers began to retreat from their maximum late-Neo-glacial positions about 1860. Hence, Matthes’s (1940) estimate of glacial advances culminating about 1850 to 1855, for many glaciers in the western United States seems reasonable for the Glacier National Park region. Retreat rates, derived from the tree-ring data, appear to have been modest (100 m/yr) from this time until 1932. In addition, while the Agassiz Glacier was monitored by the National Park Service (1932 to 1942) retreat continued at a rapid rate (>90 m/yr). This period of rapid retreat corresponds with a period of above-average summer temperatures and decreased precipitation in the climatic record of the region. Since the mid-1940s the retreat rate of both glaciers has slowed markedly.”
Draw your own conclusions. Mine are that the glacier recession is overwhelmingly natural. If we are “helping”, our contribution is minor and irrelevant because it’s going to happen anyway, and there ain’t nuthin’ we can do about it. At most, we may accelerate glacier demise by a single human generation. The only thing that will stop it is a new ice age – mini or otherwise. (That is not to suggest that we shouldn’t conserve energy or develop sane and practical alternative sources, e.g., the liquid fluoride thorium reactor. Increasing the standard of living in the under-developed world is the means to control the population explosion and resource crisis everyone worries about. That requires energy, lots of it. Ironic isn’t it?)
I grew up in Calgary, just a stone’s throw north of Montana. We have our own Glacier park (Columbia Icefields), in fact that is the direct source of our municipal water supply.
I grew up in an environment of spur-of-the-moment weekend jaunts out to Banff and Lake Louise, and since my brother in law got his Piper Cherokee 20 years ago we occasionally fly over the icefields… which is often a bumpy flight.
One of my favorite logical disconnects is the declaration made a few years back by some environmentalist. Here it is: the glaciers are melting. Our water comes directly from the glaciers. We should use less water. The really scary part of that is how many otherwise intelligent people I know that actually see nothing wrong with this logic.
Anyway, in my 40+ years of regularly visiting the region I have seen nothing to indicate that anything is out of the ordinary except for the grotesque commercialization of the tiny little portion of the Rockies that is Banff. We get good years, we get bad years. Every time there is less snowfall the ski resorts are all crying that they need federal money to stay in business because of “climate change”, every time there is more snowfall we have other groups screaming for money.
One sad thing: if you wander around the icefields via Google Earth, almost every one of the glacier “popups” (which come directly from wikipedia) are lamenting the loss of these glaciers due to manmade global warming. It is the most pathetic, transparent, ignorant thing I see when panning around.
Craig Moore (08:39:06) :
In 1995, The Front Range of Colorado had very low snow pack at the end of March, and ended up with record high snow pack in June.
Nobody is “misrepresenting” anything. Snow pack in Montana from 1917-1941 was often 30% of “normal.” Was that due to CO2?
Steve Goddard (08:04:07) :
The ROOS graph you cited is dated 9th April. You made your post 12th April. The Cryosphere graph I linked is current. Your observation was already out of date by the time you posted. Arctic sea ice area is below normal. Check my link above.
You’ve done something wrong with the overlay. 1976 shows up as about -0.23C on your graph. The actual GISS anomaly for 1976 is about -.17C: it’s warmer. There are discrepancies like that for other years, but that one is the easiest to see.
Hansen ’88 ran with a climate sensitivity of 4C for a doubling of CO2. That has since been revised down by 25% to 3C. Hansen’s projections from 20 years ago are too high. It would be better to work with more recent models (like the AR4 ensemble from 1990) to see how obs compare to the state of the science.
” barry (07:32:46) :
Now that Arctic ice area is normal?
It’s 50 thousand square kilometers below normal (as of today – 13/04/2010).”
You should learn the difference between “normal” and “average”. “Normal” could be defined as (medium +/- 1 SD). That would mean e.g. that an IQ of 85 to 115 is “normal”.
Excellent post. Amazing what one sees when the actual local temperatures and precipitation are looked at when something is blamed on global warming. Pederson et al came to the same conclusion that temperatures and ice melt of the past decade in GNP was not at all unusual. In fact the rates of glacier melt in GNP were higher 75 years ago than they were in the past decade. The scientific studies are out there. The Global Warming crowd just isn’t bothering to do a decent literature review. See:Pederson, G.T., S.T. Gray, D,B. Fagre, and L.J. Graumlich. 2006. Long-Duration Drought Variability and Impacts on Ecosystem Services: A Case Study from Glacier National Park, Montana. Earth Interactions, 10, Paper No. 4.