From the University of British Columbia
Seventy per cent of glacier ice in British Columbia and Alberta could disappear by the end of the 21st century, creating major problems for local ecosystems, power supplies, and water quality, according to a new study by University of British Columbia researchers.
The study found that while warming temperatures are threatening glaciers in Western Canada, not all glaciers are retreating at the same rate. The Rocky Mountains, in the drier interior, could lose up to 90 per cent of its glaciers. The wetter coastal mountains in northwestern B.C. are only expected to lose about half of their glacier volume.
“Most of our ice holdouts at the end of the century will be in the northwest corner of the province,” said Garry Clarke, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. “Soon our mountains could look like those in Colorado or California and you don’t see much ice in those landscapes.”
For the study, researchers used observational data, computer models and climate simulations to forecast the fate of individual glaciers.
There are over 17,000 glaciers in B.C. and Alberta and they play an important role in energy production through hydroelectric power. The glaciers also contribute to the water supply and are essential to mining and agriculture. Clarke says while these issues are a concern, increased precipitation due to climate change could help compensate for glacier loss. The greatest impact, he suspects, will be on freshwater ecosystems. During the late summer, glacier melt provides cool, plentiful water to many of the region’s headwaters.
“These glaciers act as a thermostat for freshwater ecosystems,” said Clarke. “Once the glaciers are gone, the streams will be a lot warmer and this will hugely change fresh water habitat. We could see some unpleasant surprises in terms of salmon productivity.”
###
Images of predicted changes to glacier ice are available here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/747qftsva6s4i5b/AAACLm5He2KVlXEwP52dMCNKa?dl=0
Background
Researchers predicted changes in the area and volume of glaciers in western Canada under a range of greenhouse gas emission scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their most recent assessment of the state of the climate system. Increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, released from fossil fuel combustion, is the primary factor that will cause increases in surface air temperatures in the decades ahead.
Researchers say the impact of climate change on glacier health may not be evident at first sight. While the surface area covered by the glacier may not be changing, the glaciers are thinning at a rate of about one metre per year.
“Most glaciers are only 100 to 200 metres thick,” said Clarke. “They’re losing volume but this loss we’re seeing right now is a bit hidden.”
This study is a collaboration between UBC, the University of Northern British Columbia, the University of Iceland and the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium.
So they used some observational data but then went off to model land for the rest of it and used the green house emissions scenarios from the IPCC. Did they use the current scenario where there is a rise in CO2 but no rise in temperature for 20 years? It’s not as if the models have been anything like accurate. So this is another waste of public money.
“Seventy per cent of glacier ice in British Columbia and Alberta could disappear by the end of the 21st century, creating major problems for local ecosystems, power supplies, and water quality.”
Could? Or could not?
Major problems? Or not?
Typical study.
If the same scientist came out with a study showing that glaciers were expanding in Western Canada, this same comments column would be full of self-congratulatory backpatting and “I told you so.” Also with no knowledge or understanding of the facts. Move along folks, no science to see here.
Glacial science is infact trying to coverup inconvenient growing glaciers. The Karakoram glaciers are mostly growing, an inconvenient fact some want to ignore as it gives skeptics evidence CC is wrong.
Himalayan ice can fool climate studies
Science 27 March 2015:
Vol. 347 no. 6229 pp. 1404-1405
DOI: 10.1126/science.347.6229.1404
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6229/1404.summary
The gist of the article are interviews with two glaciologists studying the Karakoram glaciers which appear to be growing and are susceptible to rapid, periodic surges. One of the “scientists” openly suggests that since they don’t understand why they should be growing it confounds global Climate Change models, and thus they should be omitted from Global estimates of Glacial ice mass loss and behavior. How convenient. Ignore the data that doesn’t fit your model.
SHF,
Nice bait.
Ps You once said that you would leave these pages, never to return, yet you reappear with monotonous regularity.
Yeah, I said that but it turned out I couldn’t keep away. They should be happy I keep driving traffic to the page.
His point is absolutely valid. When a paper is published that says there is not a proven link between a rise in temperatures and AGW (such as the, the research is immediately touted here as being rock solid – even when the paper sits behind a paywall. Here is an example: http://www.livescience.com/49052-california-drought-linked-natural-causes.html
And then in the next breath the very same institution/scientists involved (NOAA, NASA, etc) are attacked for being dishonest & money grubbing when they publish papers that support AGW.
Harry – maybe these scientists should also include the fact that glaciers have been receeding since the mid 1700’s. This “study” suggests that this melting is something new. And the picture taken in 2100 is fascinating. Did they take a time machine to take the picture and bring it back? You are correct when you say “no science to see here”.
Nearly all of these ‘studies’ are actually projections. When it is getting colder, they project downwards. When it warms, they project it upwards. They have done this for the last 100 years even though it is quite obvious that we have this cold/warm 30 year and 60 year cycle punctuated by even longer cycles with the most important cycle being the Ice Age/Interglacial cycles.
None are identical but all are similar. This is why we can postulate with near total certainty that the next Ice Age will happen and it is much closer in time to us than any other time in the last 8,000 years.
This is why worries about glacial melting is silly. Canada is ground zero for all Ice Ages, they begin in Canada roughly where the Hudson Bay is. When the Hudson Bay is iced over more and more, this is a danger sign. No Ice Ages began in the mountains along the west coast of North America.
These do grow during Ice Ages but the main glacier of gigantic size is the huge ones that cover much of Canada and a fair chunk of the USA. Canada virtually disappears under glaciers during every Ice Age.
It would be interesting if they could define what is “normal” temperature over the last, say 20,000 years. Would it be 20,000 years ago when the whole area was covered in glaciers ? How about 12.000 years ago when it was warm enough to have those massive glaciers melt? Or 10,000 years ago when the Greenland Ice cores show it was substantially warmer than today? Or, based on the Greenland Ice Core data, what period during the last 10,000 years would they choose for “normal” ?
I was an electrical grid operator in BC for 35 years and can say very little hydro electrical power is sourced from glaciers it is rain and snow melt.
A climate scientist from this same la la land uni stated the poor ski season that resulted from a mild winter in the Vancouver area mountains is proof of ‘climate change’. The local media breathlessly reported his expert statement.
Should I add to their paper that 99.99% of glaciers in those areas are already gone? Around 11000 years ago the sheets were miles thick and covered most of the mountains. This is just the pitiful remnants in the first place we are talking about. What’s more I would wager that these glaciers have been far smaller in the Medieval, Roman and Minoan warm periods. After all, they still haven’t found all the Roman mines in the Alps because some of them are currently covered by glaciers! I know the Romans didn’t try to mine through the glacier.
A regular commenter here on WattsUpWithThat stated not long ago (I’m paraphrasing here)
12,000 years ago the temperature of the Earth rose above that necessary to sustain the Laurentide Ice Sheet. The ice sheet began to retreat, and has continued to retreat since then.
Since these legacy glaciers in Alberta were once part of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, the question to really be asking is what the recent increase in human burning of fossil fuels contributed to ending the Wisconsinan glaciation?
I don’t think the Albertan glaciers are relics of the Laurentide ice sheet. I believe the only remnant of the Laurentide ice sheet is the Barnes ice cap on Baffin island. Funnily enough, despite being in eastern Canada it is thinning at exactly the same rate as the BC/Alberta glaciers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_Ice_Cap
“ … the estimated extent of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet approximately 17 thousand years ago.”
Map of neoglacial period – or scroll about half way down
from: https://pleistoceneholoceneglaciationbc.wordpress.com/
Without knowing the freeze line for the glaciers it is not possible to know what is causing them to be reduced in size. If these are low altitude glaciers they will melt period with or without added CO2. Story needs more info.
“The study found that while warming temperatures are threatening glaciers in Western Canada, ”
Incorrect observation. It is not warming in Western Canada so if glaciers are melting, it is because the temperature increase that occurred before the anthropogenic CO2 increase is not compatible with continental glaciers.
temp data from Environment Canada:
It could be that there is more sunshine. But EC won’t tell us. They are down to one reporting station for sunshine data.
?w=1536&h=960
https://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/the-sad-state-of-environment-canadas-sunshine-data/
In many cases, the glaciers in question exist well above the freezing level. That is, the temperature is well below freezing 365. I think the key is not temperature but precipitation patterns. I don’t know if this paper is projecting the ablation zones (zones where glaciers recede) will increase due to the freezing level going up? Or do the researchers project that the Northern Rockies will under go long term drought? At the end of this century, do the researchers project freezing levels to be as high as 10,000 MSL?
I ask this question in light of the fact that tropical mid tropospheric hot spot has failed to materialize. Going back to AR3, the tropical mid tropospheric hot spot was supposed to one of the key signatures of AGW. In that case, it is fair to say that the increase in low level tropospheric temperatures would also be seen in the mid-latitudes. But, none of that has occurred. AR3 was published over a decade ago.
The loss of tropical glaciers was all the rage 10 years ago (see RealClimate) Lonny Jones was at the forefront of this alarm. Things have quieted down since then. One of the major findings about Mt Kilimanjaro, was that land use, and variations in the Walker Circulation had more to do with receding glaciers there than AGW. And this new study appears to shed no new light or break new ground.
I can would be more convinced if they showed a decline with pics from 2000, 1990, 1980. All the computer generated images of imagined loss, don’t really don’t for me.
They say: “could disappear by the end of the 21st century”.
Could also increase in mass if it remains cold with more precipitation. I think they are monitoring the wrong glaciers. The largest non polar tidewater glaciers in the NH and SH are actually increasing.
OK, lets “cherry pick” some glaciers to monitor. How about the largest tidewater glaciers in the NH and SH, not counting Antarctica and Greenland.
The authors are forgetting about Hubbard Glacier in southern Alaska (the largest tidewater glacier in North America). 76 miles in length, 1518 sq. miles – Current status: Advancing.
Taku Glacier of the Juneau Ice field (the largest glacier in that Ice field) is advancing, as opposed to the much smaller Mendenhall Glacier from that same ice field – (Taku Glacier) is advancing. Recognized as the deepest and thickest glacier known in the world, the Taku Glacier is measured at 4,845 feet (1,477 m) thick. The advance is due to a positive mass balance; that is, more snow accumulates than snow and ice melt. Status: advancing.
It looks like the largest glacier of the Patagonian ice field is also advancing. From Wikipedia: “Brüggen Glacier, also known as Pío XI Glacier, is in southern Chile and is the largest western outflow from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. Now about 66 km (41 mi) in length, it is the longest glacier in the southern hemisphere outside of Antarctica.” – Status: advancing.
The Perito Moreno Glacier, one of the largest glaciers on the Argentina side of the Patagonian ice field (97 sq. miles) – (although not a tidewater glacier, its terminus is in lake Argentina at an altitude of just 150M). – Status: advancing.
See a pattern here – the largest non polar tidewater glaciers are advancing. (Increasing in mass) I would think that is significant too.
So in summary…
“We are benefiting from large amounts of glacial runoff now, but when it’s all gone we won’t.”
“Oh, and it’s all your fault. (Not mine, even though I drive a truck and use electricity generated from coal.)”
Sounds like typical liberal “victim” reasoning.
I quote:
“Researchers predicted changes in the area and volume of glaciers in western Canada under a range of greenhouse gas emission scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change … Increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere … is the primary factor that will cause increases in surface air temperatures in the decades ahead.”
Yeah, verily. Remember that IPCC once told us to expect decadal temperature rise of 0.2 degrees in the new century. I classify this paper as another futile attempt to explain away the existence of the hiatus/pause/absence of warming. Anthony Watts used to keep track of them but when their number exceeded fifty he gave up on it. Here is the scientific fallacy the paper depends upon. They make the assumption that the primary factor that causes increase of SAT is increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That is demonstrably false. There has been no increase of global mean temperature for 18 years while at the same time, atmospheric carbon dioxide just kept on increasing. But this is impossible according to the Arrhenius greenhouse theory used by the IPCC. Arrhenius requires that addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will produce the greenhouse effect and this is not happening. If a scientific theory like Arrhenius makes an unequivocally false prediction the theory itself is considered false and belongs in the waste basket of history. The correct greenhouse theory to use is the Miscolczi greenhouse theory, MGT. It tells it like it is: addition of carbon dioxide to air does not warm the air. It came out in 2007 and was promptly blacklisted by the global warming establishment. It differs from the Arrhenius theory in being able to handle more than one GHG at the same time. Arrhenius can handle only one, carbon dioxide. The IPCC requirement that water vapor in the atmosphere should triple the greenhouse effect from carbon dioxide alone must be added as an additional hypothesis that has never been scientifically validated. According to MGT, carbon dioxide and water vapor in the atmosphere jointly form an optimal absorption window in the infrared. Its optical thickness is 1.87, determined by Miskolczi from first principles. If you now add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, it will start to absorb in the IR, just as Arrhenius predicts. But this will increase the optical thickness. And as soon as this happens, water vapor will begin to diminish, rain out, and the original optical thickness is restored. The added carbon dioxide will of course keep absorbing but the reduction of water vapor keeps the amount of absorption constant and no warming is possible. With that dies the greenhouse theory of global warming. Since the greenhouse warming is assumed to be the cause of AGW the anthropogenic global warming is likewise dead. IPCC was established specifically to study the effect of global warming on humans. Since we have proved that AGW does not exist there is no longer any warming effect influencing humans. Hence, there is no need for IPCC and it should be closed down.
92% of the solar energy that strikes the earth’s surface is absorbed by the oceans, with 2-3% being absorbed by the entirety of land masses. Therefore a conclusion of whether or not warming has stopped cannot be drawn without considering ocean temperatures. I will set aside the fact that land based temperature data does not indicate a pause in warming.
Computer-generated ‘data’ is not real data–it’s some computer modeler’s arbitrary numbers used to paint some predetermined scenario. As shown by comparing computer model predictions of temperature change with what actually happened even in the past decade, model predictions have been a total failure, as recognized by everyone. How is this one any different? How can we check it against past climate changes?
A vast amount of well-documented climate data is available to look into the past to see if glaciers have disappeared in the past during times of similar global warming. It was warmer during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) that lasted several hundred years–did glaciers disappear then? No–alpine glaciers receded upvalley but, except for perhaps a few small ones, did not disappear. Mt. Baker, a few kilometers south of British Columbia, has an excellent 14C-dated moraine that shows glaciers retreated somewhat during the MWP but then readvanced strongly during the Little Ice Age. We see the same pattern over and over since the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 years ago. If glaciers didn’t disappear during past times of warming greater than the thawing out since the Little Ice Age, why would they do so in the future?
And remember, computer model predictions are based on the assumption that CO2 is causing global warming since 1945, but much greater global warming has occurred many times in the past without any effect from CO2. And consider how much CO2 is in the atmosphere–it’s only 0.040% and has risen only 0.008% since ‘global warming,’ (supposedly caused by human emissions) began in 1945. And consider that 30 years of global cooling occurred while CO2 emissions were soaring from 1945 to 1975 and that there has been no global warming for the past 18 years even though CO2 continues to rise. Yet all of the computer models used to predict the vanishing of glaciers assume that CO2 will cause the warming they predict.
Clarke’s computer model prediction is no better than all of the other failed computer model predictions. We can relegate it to the world of geofantasy.
BC folks have a hatred for hydroelectricity, logging, oil, gas and mining. I remember they used to come to anti mining rallies on their titanium bicycles. Maybe they consider this on the benefit side of the catastrophe. These are the folks that voted overwhelmingly for cap and trade and got it. It will now be government policy to push this BS and fund studies that show the policy was needed. Oh, I’m sure the prof is highly respected because he’s giving what urban brain bleached BC-ites think they need. Rescuing all these folks when they don’t know they need rescue is going to be 100yr project by lowly respected people who can still think – a bit like my favorite metaphor: saving the Nile crocodile while the croc is trying to bite your head off.
“computer models and climate simulations” Now who can argue with that, authentic frontier gibberish.
I was really worried until I read that this was just the result of another Nintendo computer game. Until they upgrade to the latest X-Box game we cannot trust a word they say.
Unfortunately, unlike me, they draw a salary for playing these silly games.
Yawn. More people trying to cash in on the doomsday funding.
More talk with noting to back it up with. That is typical AGW.
It is the first theory that has the data conform to it, rather then the theory conforming to the data.
While the study is full of unscientific weasel words: might, could, may, etc., the headlines certainly are not:
How Western Canada glaciers will melt away ~ CBCNews
Western Canada to lose 70 per cent of glaciers by 2100 ~ University of British Columbia
Most B.C. glaciers gone by 2010 ~ Vancouver Sun
Climate change attacks: Western Canada to lose 70 percent of glaciers, study says ~ Washington Post
And of course the headlines are all that the alarmists read, remember and cite as proof.
“Scientists raise alarm on glaciers” front page of the Edmonton Journal. Since when is the publication of a scientific study front page news?
Can you imagine the graphics these guys would be presenting if we all lived 15,000 years ago?
Wow. Think of the myriad of insurmountable disasters faced by people in N America when a CONTINENT-sized ice-sheet was melting 10000 yrs ago. Suddenly there were vast stretches of land open where mile-high glaciers once stood.
Wait ….Let me see if I have this right.
If the glaciers melt, there will be less meltwater in the future.
But if the glaciers don’t melt …. wouldn’t that mean no meltwater at all?