(ONLINE) Glaciology on a Global Scale: Melting Mountains Week 2

Join the Mazama Conservation Committee for the second installment of Melting Mountains: More Than A Decade Later, an online series of presentations on the impact of climate change on alpine environments.

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This presentation will cover glacier trends in the mountain west all the way through Greenland and Antarctica. Continued climate warming is causing our glaciers to continually retreat. Warming not only increases ice melt in summer it also starves the glaciers in winter by changing snow to rain. A temporary benefit of this loss is enhanced flow to alpine streams due to the release of water from its storage as ice. However, this enhanced streamflow is clearly not sustainable as the glaciers shrink and disappear. Studies show, as expected, the lower elevation glaciers are being most affected by climate warming.  One example are the low elevation glaciers of the Olympic National Park, which may largely disappear by 2070. In addition to alpine glaciers, Greenland and Antarctica are being affected as well. Greenland is particularly susceptible given its position between two ice-free continents. Currently the global loss of ice, and its contribution to sea level, is equally divided between alpine glaciers, Greenland and Antarctica.  Unlike alpine glaciers, the two ice sheets are susceptible to processes that will greatly accelerate ice loss and these processes are underway. The loss of glacier ice  from all three sources is causing sea level to rise leading to a grim long-term future.

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Dr. Andrew G. Fountain is a professor emeritus at Portland State University in the departments of Geology and Geography. His early start was collecting and preserving snowflakes in junior high school. He spent two years in Alaska enjoying ice in all its forms while working on his MS degree at the University of Alaska. After joining the USGS in Tacoma, WA he started working on glaciers and during that time completed a PhD at the University of Washington. After a relocation to Denver, CO Andrew joined the faculty at Portland State University, where he studied glaciers in Alaska, Sweden, and Antarctica. His current focus is on the glaciers of the American West, how they are changing and their possible futures. In 2018 he was made an Honorary Member of the Mazamas in recognition of his lifelong scientific work in glaciology and global warming issues.

Register for Dr. Fountain's talk here.