Iceland and Norway's glaciers advancing? Not any more... 02 March 05

is dropping greater precipitation (including snow) up there in Norway & Iceland – at least I think that’s what’s happening, due to GW moving the precipitation belt farther north & causing greater precip due to greater evaporation….

How many people does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent bulb? It takes one moron. Or, it takes three scientists. One to study it, one to analyze the findings, and one to screw it in. Or, it takes six rocket scientists. One to study its aerodynamics, one to study its ergonomics, two to analyze the findings, one to present the report to NASA, and one to screw it in.

As for climate skeptics. Well, they aren’t able to screw it in, but they are writing a seven hundred page report on why it shouldn’t be done.

As for the U.S. Congress, they are passing a law that forbids people from screwing the bulbs in. And as the U.S. President, he is planning a military attack on anyone in the world who does screw one in.

With your own personal observations of retreating glaciers, it must be unnerving when Crichton misleads others by lying about glaciers which he obviously knows little about.

I checked your graphs and further explored that resource and other resources to learn more about glaciers and I have more questions from doing that.

I learned that each glacier system has its own unique characteristics but with common aspects such as an accumulation zone and an ablation zone whereby the mass balance of water entering the accumulation zone, at higher altitudes, in the form of snow must equal water leaving the ablation zone in order for the glacier to have a net mass-balance of zero and be in equilibrium.

The glacier movement is determined by many factors and the ice is lost through a process of both evaporation and melting in the ablation zone. I am interested more in how much ice directly evaporates into the air above the glacier and if any studies have been done on this. I could not find anything on that. I suspect that a low relative humidity would increase evaporation and cause more ice loss through evaporation.

This question I present is relevant in how much of this ice loss is going into the air and how much is going into the sea? I am curious to know. In regards to the mass balance, if the relative humidity is constant, then I would think that the evaporative losses may not have changed.

If relative humidity was reduced, then the drier air may absorb more moisture. If GW increases the ability of air to hold more moisture, then will this be a negative feedback loop aiding atmospheric absorption of water offsetting some of the water going into the sea?

This leads to another question regarding snow accumulation and the net increase in snow accumulation over the record period for these glacier systems. How much increase in snow accumulation has there been world-wide with respect to these glaciers?

This question is relevant in terms of showing an increase in water vapor absorbed by the atmosphere and this would tend to further substantiate GW is occurring since higher atmospheric temperatures would result in absorbing more water especially if the relative humidity is held constant which is an assumption used in many computer models.

Also, I am curious as to the percentage of actual ice mass lost as a percentage of the total mass of the glacier and at what average annual rate this is occurring. This can help gain a perspective on current trends. In other words, how fast is the ice reducing as a percentage of its total mass?

Another area of interest is the melt-water forming under the glacier and exiting the glacier undetected by surface observations forming either caverns or pools of water below the surface?

For those who remember physics class, ice melts under pressure and that is why ice can be slippery. It is the principle on how ice skates work. I suspect that one reason for the acceleration of ice flows is that temperatures under the ice have reduced sufficiently whereby the pressures above move the system more quickly. In other words, the bottom is more slippery with melted water creating less friction to hold the glacier back.

With respect to the glacier systems, does this melt-water underneath result from heat conducted from the ice above or does the ground contacting the glacier system conduct more heat into the glacier? This question is relevant in terms of how the heat from GW is reaching the glacier.

I think most everyone knows that the glaciers are in retreat. Your book pointed that out and what you posted makes Crichton looks like a liar.

With that said, I hope you continue to post sources that increase our knowledge. I hope we continue to strive for higher levels of thought in our discussion based on this increased knowledge and awareness.

I did get confirmation based on my intuitive understanding about melting ice based on physics. I told Norbertzangox that I did not need a thermometer to know Alaska was warming. The melting ice told me that. I was correct because I read from your sources that the increased heat influx was calculated from the reduced ice mass.

This makes total sense to me because if you know the mass of ice that went directly into either liquid or gaseous states, then you know the heat required to do that. The increased heat influx by your sources was measured in terms of a few W/m2 (watts per square meter).

Based on latitude and longitude coordinates, I have found looking at a table in one of my engineering books that at 60 degrees North latitude, the June extraterrestrial average daily solar radiation is 40.6 MJ/m2. This solar energy is roughly cut in half in a clear atmosphere to 20.3 MJ/m2. If we convert this to the average heat influx for June (I am including night time to make it easier to calculate) to W/m2 then we have:

20.3 (1,000,000) J/m2 divided by (24)(60)(60) seconds for June to equal 234.9 J/sec/m2 or rather 234.9 W/m2 (One J/sec = 1 watt). If the land has an albedo of 20% and the ice has an albedo of 80%, then a covering of reflective snow over the adjacent land by artificial means would increase adjacent land albedo by 80-20 = 60 %. This would reflect back incident solar radiation back to space as calculated below:

234.9 W/m2 (0.60) = 140.9 W/m2

So, if some of the adjacent land surface area close to a glacier were coated with artificial snow, then it might be sufficient to reduce temperature in the local area to stabilize the glacier from retreating because the effective local heat balance was restored?

Just an idea and I did a few rough calculations this time to prove it worthy of further discussion.

It is still merely a rough calculation based on estimating the validity of a concept for further thought. I leave it to others to calculate the costs of creating the artificial albedo in a cost effective way or if the costs can be justified or not.

If it is a viable idea, then it may be worth researching for those who need to maintain glacier systems supplying water. I know that artificial snow is created for recreational purposes and we only need a dusting to increase the albedo. Maybe the adjacent rocky ground could be spray-painted white instead!

The preceding calculation is based on glacier systems which have low albedo surrounding land. Many of the photos from your main resource showed land surrounding the glacier to be snow free.

Just some of my silly thoughts!

Now, I just looked up a site as I am writing this to get a better understanding of the numbers as to the urgency of this glacier melt. From the site below, I did a few more calculations and I wonder if they are correct.

http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/

According to this site:

“Glacier contribution to sea-level rise was estimated at some 0.25 mm per year with an accelerating tendency since the mid 1980s”.

In Table 3, from this same site, the total sea-level equivalent was estimated to be 0.24 meters.

Now, if we multiply 0.25 mm per year by 100 years we get 25 mm in a century which is 2.5 centimeters in a century or ONE inch per century!

If we divide (0.00025m/year) by 0.24m and then multiply it by a 100-year time frame, then we will have a percentage decrease of 10.4 percent. This means that the current rate of glacier melt worldwide would reduce the total glacial mass by 10 percent over a hundred year time span!

Granted that my calculation was a linear one and therefore melt rates can increase over time. However, from your cited graph, the recent trends over the past decades appear more linear than not.

With respect to the immediate urgency of sea level rise, one inch per century does not seem to be a big concern for the immediate future so I am less anxious about the next couple of decades.

This does not mean that we should not work to reduce the long-term effects since melting reduces albedo and therefore increases the heat influx as more land and ocean are exposed replacing reflective ice for longer periods.

Mark, I think we will all benefit from a more detailed discussion on some of the points I have brought up and glaciers are something you already have first-hand knowledge about.

I did read where mountain glaciers going down a high gradient slope (like the photo of your Jacabamba Glacier which you visited in Peru) are most vulnerable to GW.

I guess more gravity force is available pulling the ice mass down to accelerate it making it slide faster once the underlying ice melts.

Is this what caused your glacier in Peru to melt so fast?

Best, Dan

how many New Labourites does it take to change a lightbulb? they don’t, they just change the subject. how many conservatives? – Change! Tories don’t believe in change. Lib Dems? just one, in principle. socialists? a million, one to hold the bulb in place and the rest to organise a revolution Anarchists – 6 billion. before you change anything you have to change everything Greens? both of them.