Preface. Roger Roots is the author who gave us this previous story Glacier National Park Quietly Removes Its ‘Gone by 2020’ Signs. ~cr
By Roger Roots J.D., Ph.D.,
The US Geological Survey (USGS) and National Park Service (NPS) have committed massive resources toward promotion of the glacier melt narrative at Glacier National Park (GNP). Various USGS and NPS signs, pamphlets, websites and films have predicted calamitous melting of the Park’s glaciers in the near future. During the winter of 2018-19, while the Park’s facilities were closed to the public, government workers quietly removed signs predicting the Park’s glaciers would all disappear by 2020.
Since 2015 the USGS and NPS have prominently displayed data tables on their websites indicating that GNP’s glaciers have been steadily decreasing each half decade. The data table is frequently referenced in news stories to describe the plight of the glaciers as steadily receding.
Measuring glaciers can be quite difficult. Many glaciers are oddly shaped. Glaciers are not always snow white and can even be brown or soil-colored due to rock or dirt deposits. Calendar dates and temporary weather changes can make huge differences. Fresh snow can easily obscure the contours of glacier boundaries. The USGS reportedly uses satellites or aircraft to photograph glaciers from the air and then calculates acreages from such photos. (For earlier years, USGS apparently calculates such glacier sizes from old photographs. There are many problems regarding this, to say the least.)
But for all the government resources dedicated to the size of glaciers at GNP in recent years, the official table hasn’t been updated since 2015–SIX years ago. (And as I write these words the table is missing from USGS sites.) Last fall I emailed officials at USPS and inquired. A USGS scientist named Caitlyn Florentine responded by claiming “We aim to update glacier margin data sets whenever late-summer, cloud-free, smoke-free satellite imagery covering GNP glaciers is acquired.” “The last few years this has not happened . . . .”
Just this past weekend Dr. Florentine emailed to let me know that “2021 aerial imagery of glaciers in Glacier National Park was aquired [during the Fall]” “Publication preparation is underway.”
Why is this significant? Because the summer of 2021 was unusually hot and dry across Montana and the Rocky Mountains. Many locations near the National Park experienced heat waves and set records for draught. The data soon to be released will likely show new record lows for Glacier Park’s 35-or-so glaciers. And these new low figures may not accurately reflect the true trajectory of size changes among the GNP glaciers.
Prior to the heat waves of 2021, many observers (including myself) perceived that glacier melt rates had largely stabilized over the past decade. In fact there were several recent winters with record cold and snowfall. A Masters thesis by Melissa Carrie Brett of Portland State University, “Glacier Inventories and Change in Glacier National Park,” found that GNP’s glaciers melted at faster rates prior to the 1970s than in later years–thus contradicting the catastrophic-global-warming-by-manmade-CO2 hypothesis.
BOTTOM LINE: in the very near future, USGS will probably publish data indicating GNP’s glaciers are steadily melting, in line with the climate-change theory; but USGS’ decision to delay measuring in 2019 or 2020 and instead measure the glaciers after the extremely hot summer of 2021 should significantly undermine such a conclusion.
“GNP’s glaciers are steadily melting, in line with the climate-change theory.” Are you sure about that? I thought 2020 was “in line with the climate-change theory”. That’s what all the signs said. Did they update the theory somewhere without telling anyone?
I’m sure they’ll say it’s in line with the theory, but they’ll never tell you exactly where in the theory it said that. Because it didn’t say that. There is no prediction in the theory about how fast the glaciers in Glacier National Park will retreat. To the extent there is even any mention of the park in any theory, the wording would be so nebulous as to make any “prediction”, like reading Nostradamus. But I’m sure they’ll still say it’s in line with the theory. After all, there’s a (million) sucker(s) born every minute.
Studies show that climate propaganda will all disappear by 2030. Poof! Gone.
If there is a deep channel underneath this glacier, then it’s possible that may not bode well for the Vanderford Glacier, but that, of course, requires further study
Giant canyon discovered underneath Vanderford Glacier in Antarctica, revealing history behind rising sea levels (msn.com)
The Dooming is the gift that keeps on giving endlessly.
Here is something that I now find myself wondering about. Spaceweather.com lists 10/1957 as the current solar max. That makes me wonder if that was the cause of the record setting heatwave back in the summer of 1957 (temps as high as 116 F) which struck NorCal and Southern Oregon. To add a bit more fuel to this idea current daytime temps in NorCal have climbed recently up to 60 F in lockstep with the large increase in sunspot numbers. Then every night temps are dropping below freezing. I can’t help but think that changes in sunspot numbers can dierctly affect surface temps on our planet.
See “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years” by Singer and Avery. They fully confirm a connection between earth’s climate and sunspots, and give the science behind their claim.
There are a number of historic scientific papers and data sets that clearly document the recession of the glaciers in GNP:
1). Grinnell and Sperry Glaciers, Glacier National Park, Montana
A Record of Vanishing Ice, by Arthur Johnson
Geological Survey Professional Paper: Volume 1180 – January 1, 1980 U.S. Government Printing Office
https://play.google.com/store/books/det … AAJ&rdot=1
This paper is a comprehensive history of the recession of Grinnell and Sperry glaciers from the time of their discoveries in the late 1800’s to the mid 1960’s. One of the most interesting set of measurements presented in this paper is the amount of recession of the Grinnell Glacier terminus throughout the years:
1927 to 1937: average recession/year = 31.5 feet
1937 to 1945: average recession/year = 30.4 feet
1945 to 1950: average recession/year = 12.2 feet
1950 to 1960: average recession/year = 8.7 feet
1960 to 1968: average recession/year = 2.4 feet
These measurements, along with many others on both Grinnell and Sperry Glaciers confirm that very rapid melting of the Park’s glaciers was already occurring in the early 1900’s.
2). Recession of glaciers in Glacier National Park, Montana
by James L. Dyson
The Journal of Geology, Vol. 49, No. 8 (Nov. – Dec. 1941), pp. 815-824
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 … 00508/full
This paper studies the recession of not only Grinnell and Sperry glaciers (and several others) in detail, but it also discusses the rapid melting of all of the park’s glaciers during the 1900 to 1940 time period. Some noteworthy findings by Dyson:
– “Results indicate that since the beginning of the century, some of the principal glaciers have been reduced 40-75 per cent in area and more in volume.”
– “Not only the few glaciers listed above, but all those in Glacier National Park, have been undergoing pronounced recession in recent years. Several of the smaller ones ….. have entirely disappeared. Other glaciers, principally Harrison, Kintla, and Blackfoot, which were among the area’s most important years ago, have been reduced to pitiable remnants.”
– “unless a general climatic change occurs within the next ten or fifteen years, it seems quite probable that such thin masses of ice as Jackson and Agassiz glaciers will disappear.”
Remember, this is being written in 1941. It confirms the early 1900’s rapid recession of not only Grinnell Glacier, but also that this rapid melting was occurring to all of the Park’s glaciers at an alarming rate.
3). Decadal-scale climate drivers for glacial dynamics in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA
By Daniel B. Fagre, el. al.
Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 31, Issue 12, June 2004
Th1is paper contains a graph of the recession of the trimline (glacier terminus) of Jackson and Agassiz glaciers. This shows how much the trimline had receded on the noted years. This confirms Dyson’s observations of rapid glacier recession before the early 1940’s. Also note the very minor recession of both glaciers between 1942/44 and 1976. Apparently, Dyson’s “general climatic change” did occur as both glaciers are still in existence today!
It is quite clear from these science papers that there was a period of very rapid glacier recession throughout Glacier National Park that began no later than 1900 and lasted until at least the early 1940’s. After studying the data from these various papers, I estimated the average annual rate of surface area loss of the Park’s glaciers during the time of highest melting to be at least 2% per year.
The “consensus” date of when human caused CO2 reached sufficient levels to affect the global climate is about 1950. The question is: has the melting rate of the park’s glaciers continued to increase in response to human caused CO2? Fortunately, we have very good data from the U.S. Geological Survey on the surface area of all the Park’s glaciers to answer this question. This data may be found at:
https://www.usgs.gov/data-tools/area-na … nf-derived
The total surface area of all the named glaciers in the Park are given as follows (conversion of square meter to Acres are my calculation):
1966: 20,761,361.98 sq.m. (5130 Acres)
1998: 15,669,815.67 sq.m. (3872 Acres)
2005: 14,857,608.71 sq.m. (3671 Acres)
2015: 13,630,605.96 sq.m. (3368 Acres)
From this data, I calculated the average annual rate of surface area loss of the Park’s glaciers as follows:
1966-1998: 0.87% per year
1998-2005: 0.75% per year
2005-2015: 0.86% per year
The rate of surface area loss has remained remarkably constant since 1966, during a period of ever increasing CO2 levels. Also the rate of surface loss has been less than half the rate observed prior to the 1940’s, when CO2 levels were much lower than now.
Oh look climate change! No, too slow you missed it. There it is again, Nope you missed it.
Isn’t the point of taking images in the fall to avoid confounding snowfall with glacial area? When discussing change in climate, which looks at changes over the course of decades, why is it relevant to discuss record snowfall or low temps in certain years? Haven’t skeptics always argued that such record events are “weather” and not “climate”? Besides, if glacial growth was higher and melting was lower in 2019 and 2020, that would still be reflected in glacial extent in 2021.
Neither record snowfall nor periods of low temps is a sign that global warming is not happening. Part of rapid global warming seems to be instability, including anomalous weather events. It’s the average change over time (not only in temperature, but weather anomalies) that are significant.