Changing rate of melt in SE Alaska glaciers
According to the results of a new NASA study monitoring the amount of ice mass in the world’s glaciers, SE Alaska is losing about 84 gigatons of ice each year. Fifty percent of all the glaciers in the world are in Alaska, the decrease in mass is alarming and should be appreciable by visitors who will cruise there this summer.
If you are booked on an Alaskan cruise and you would like to see for yourself evidence of global climate change, use this simple rule as taken from my book, The Cruiser Friendly Guide to Alaska’s Inside Passage, “How can you tell if a glacier is advancing or retreating? If a glacier is growing, it will be pushing new ice down the mountainside encroaching into trees and vegetation. However, if it is retreating the front and sides of the glacier will be sitting on bare rock scoured down from where the glacier previously sat.” Keep an eye out for newly exposed rock contiguous to glacial ice, indication of recent thinning and melting.
For more information on the NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment click on the following link.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/12/16/melting.ice/index.html