| Author |
Message |
    
Kerensa
hunter
Username: Kerensa
Post Number: 313
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 20, 2005 - 7:13 pm: |     |
In the middle of the article it says
"Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (12 Photos)".
They show you each mountain before and now.
It is really sad to see the that.
What can we do? Nothing?
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,15 18,342491,00.html
Does it happen that quick in your country as well?
. |
Scott
flint knapper
Username: Scott
Post Number: 783
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 5:29 am: | |
Well, when the world's largest emerging economy is given a pass and the world's largest economy selfishly refused to ratify Kyoto, there isn't much hope is there?
I hike several glaciers here and some are receding a few meters per year and some several tens of meters! This is not only length-wise, but in depth as well. The Bow river flows past my house - it is a robust river and is the sole water source to over a million people. It is entirely glacier-fed. It is expected to be a dry creek within 25 years.
I see the effects of glacier retreat every day.
Thanks Kerensa - I haven't been following the issue outside of N. America, except superficially.
Scott
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Ces gens, Jondalar, ils sourient. Ils me sourient. - Ayla |
Darsina
hunter
Username: Darsina
Post Number: 432
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 9:11 am: | |
Apart from having caused increased melting, the hot summer of 2003 even has further consequences for the summers to come, no matter how hot they are. The dark rock uncovered during 2003 will radiate more heat than the solid ice, thus causing more glacier ice to melt and exposing yet more rock. What is favoured in gardening (e.g. by applying black foils), starts a vicious circle for our glaciers.
Thinking is the work of the intellect, dreaming its enjoyment. - Victor Hugo |
Cavebear
flint knapper
Username: Cavebear
Post Number: 1761
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 4:10 pm: | |
Scott - This is exactly the kind of thing that causes people to dysutopian sci-fi stories. Lack of fresh drinking water could well become a problem in the not-too-distant future. The effects on society could be devastating.
The speed of time is 3,600 seconds per hour... |
Cavebear
flint knapper
Username: Cavebear
Post Number: 1762
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 4:20 pm: | |
Darsina - Oddly enough, I have an excellent example of this in my own yard this year. Last Fall, I decided to cover my perennial flower beds with black plastic in an attempt to eliminate the annual Winter weeds that plague my area. Since there were clumps of weeds already growing when I covered the area, the surface of the black plastic is very irregular.
We have had several small snowfalls this past month. The entire plastic is covered at first, but as the surface melts off, small high-points of the plastic are revealed. This has an immediate effect that spreads rapidly across the entire area. The islands of black plastic are surrounded by snow walls several inches high, clearly showing the effect of the heat-absorbing black plastic.
This caused me to examine other areas of the yard. When the snow cover gets low enough, even small light-colored stones become islands of snowlessness. Even taller clumps of grass or emerging crocuses have the same effect.
No pun intended, but the exposure of any solid material seems to have a "snowballing" effect on the melting of the surrounding snow.
The speed of time is 3,600 seconds per hour... |
Darsina
hunter
Username: Darsina
Post Number: 433
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 6:01 pm: | |
That's amazing, CB! Your little experiment, carried out by chance, showed in principle the same results as we see them in glaciers. Thanks for sharing it with us.
I found a few pictures (apart from those that kerensa has already linked us to) that compare today's glaciers with their appearance around 1900. The site is in German, but I think you'll easily get the basic information. On the left side, there's a mention of the glacier's name (Gletschername in German), the mountain(s) surrounding it and their respective height and the year when the picture was taken. All but the last two pictures which were taken in France display Austrian glaciers, amongst them our most famous one, the Pasterze, with Austria's highest mountain (Großglockner) on its side.
http://www.poolalarm.de/Klima/gletscher/
Thinking is the work of the intellect, dreaming its enjoyment. - Victor Hugo |
Scott
flint knapper
Username: Scott
Post Number: 784
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, February 27, 2005 - 4:43 am: | |
Thanks Darsina and cavebear. Fascinating. Most of the mountains here are a very light limestone, but not all. What cavebear describes and what kerensa and Darsina have shown does happen here - it is easy to see.
Scott
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Ces gens, Jondalar, ils sourient. Ils me sourient. - Ayla |
Kerensa
hunter
Username: Kerensa
Post Number: 368
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 9:55 am: | |
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spie gel/0,1518,357366,00.html
THE COMING AND GOING OF GLACIERS
A New Alpine Melt Theory
By Hilmar Schmundt
The Alpine glaciers are shrinking, that much we know. But new research suggests that in the time of the Roman Empire, they were smaller than today. And 7,000 years ago they probably weren't around at all. A group of climatologists have come up with a controversial new theory on how the Alps must have looked over the ages.
He may not look like a revolutionary, but Ulrich Joerin, a wiry Swiss scientist in his late twenties, is part of a small group of climatologists who are in the process of radically changing the image of the Swiss mountain world. He and a colleague are standing in front of the Tschierva Glacier in Engadin, Switzerland at 2,200 meters (7,217 feet). "A few thousand years ago, there were no glaciers here at all," he says. "Back then we would have been standing in the middle of a forest." He digs into the ground with his mountain boot until something dark appears: an old tree trunk, covered in ice, polished by water and almost black with humidity. "And here is the proof," says Joerin.
Radical new theory
The tree trunk in the ice is part of a huge climatic puzzle that Joerin is analyzing for his doctoral thesis for the Institute for Geological Science at the University of Bern. And he is coming to an astonishing conclusion. The fact that the Alpine glaciers are melting right now appears to be part of regular cycle in which snow and ice have been coming and going for thousands of years.
The glaciers, according to the new hypothesis, have shrunk down to almost nothing at least ten times since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. "At the time of the Roman Empire, for example, the glacier tongue was about 300 meters higher than today," says Joerin. Indeed, Hannibal probably never saw a single big chunk of ice when he was crossing the Alps with his army.
The most dramatic change in the landscape occurred some 7,000 years ago. At the time, the entire mountain range was practically glacier-free -- and probably not due to a lack of snow, but because the sun melted the ice. The timber line was higher then as well.
The scientists' conclusion puts the vanishing glaciers of the past 150 years into an entirely new context: "Over of the past 10,000 years, fifty percent of the time, the glaciers were smaller than today," Joerin states in an essay written together with his doctoral advisor Christian Schluechter. They call it the "Green Alps" theory.
Joerin admits his theory goes against conventional wisdom. "It is hard to imagine that the glaciers, as we know them, were not the norm in past millennia, but rather an exception," he says while he and his companions dig out the tree trunk with shovels, axes and bare hands.
Indeed, critics accuse him and his colleagues of relying on a thin and ambivalent layer of facts. The Green Alpinists respond to the argument their own way: with a large orange chain saw. Kurt Nicolussi, a slender man in his late 40s, slices a slab of wood as large as a wiener schnitzel out of the trunk and analyzes it. "At least 400 annual rings, well preserved, perhaps the best sample we have ever had," he declares proudly.
------
Wilfried Haeberli of the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich is a more vocal critic. The extreme warm phases suggested by Schluechter's theory are not compatible with findings derived from ocean sediments, pollen analysis and ice cores. In fact, most climate data proves that since the Ice Age, it has never been warmer than it is today. How, one might ask, could the Alps have been free of glaciers in the Stone Age?
.....
There are some more chapters.
I find them all interesting but I have to go and read them again later. |
Pine
flint knapper
Username: Pine
Post Number: 962
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 3:14 pm: | |
So how did Ötzi remain frozen through all these cycles?
"We have something offensive for everyone. If nothing that we own offends you, please complain." - sign in a library. |
Cavebear
flint knapper
Username: Cavebear
Post Number: 2061
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 4:29 pm: | |
Excellent question, Pine. Since Otzi is about 5,000 years old, it would have been fully exposed and warmed several times, according to Joerin's hypothesis. Given that deterioration is a problem for even short-term examination of the mummified remains, it would not have survived even a few days of exposure to non-freezing conditions. |
Kerensa
hunter
Username: Kerensa
Post Number: 369
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 8:28 pm: | |
Sorry, I didn't see that I missed to copy Oetzi.
"But there are critics. Like Oetzi, the 5,300 year old Stone Age man whose body was found in the Oetz Valley Alps. After all, how could his corpse have remained intact if the ice receded again and again? The Green Alpinists argue that the fluctuation in the glacier level was subject to local influences and did not hold true for the entire Alps region.
Wilfried Haeberli of the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich is a more vocal critic. The extreme warm phases suggested by Schluechter's theory are not compatible with findings derived from ocean sediments, pollen analysis and ice cores. In fact, most climate data proves that since the Ice Age, it has never been warmer than it is today. How, one might ask, could the Alps have been free of glaciers in the Stone Age?" |
Cavebear
flint knapper
Username: Cavebear
Post Number: 2063
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 8:38 pm: | |
Arguing for a general affect that conveniently escapes specific actual situations is weak. The Green Alpine supporters have to explain the Otzi location to start with, and there is other evidence they need to get around (as mentioned by Wilfried Haeberli). |
Scott
flint knapper
Username: Scott
Post Number: 974
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Monday, June 13, 2005 - 4:35 am: | |
I've seen localised ice, in otherwise temperate, ice free conditions, but it has always been in deep ravines/crevaces. Oetzi was found in bit of a trough, but nothing like this. I agree with cavebear.
Scott
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Ces gens, Jondalar, ils sourient. Ils me sourient. - Ayla |
Colpul
bear cub
Username: Colpul
Post Number: 18
Registered: 8-2005
| | Posted on Friday, August 12, 2005 - 8:01 pm: | |
Haven't researched this or anything, just an idea that could explain how some glaciers retreated 7000 YBP while yearly mean temperature remained cooler than today. Wasn't it around 7000 YBP that the Sahara Desert began its journey from semi-arid grassland to arid desert? If so and if it had been covered with a light soil that soil wind blown could have settled on the high Alps increasing the amount of energy absorbed from the sun in places darkened by said wind blown soils. If wind and weather patterns were right it could leave some dust here but not there.
When Otzi was first found I seem to remember one of the reasons given for his unearthing, or un-icing, was a high number of sandstorms on the Sahara frosting some of the Alps with a light layer of airborne debris. If for a thousand years the light soil that must have been covering the Sahara were removed by wind erosion leaving heavier soils, like sand, that lighter soil must have landed some place. Maybe we see less of this effect today because the Sahara is now covered in heavier stuff that needs heavier winds to get it up to altitude and where it is expanding today is too far south so it gets moved in a different weather subsystem.
I live on the Palouse in Southeast Washington which is close to a semi-arid region with dryland wheat farming but I ski in Northern Idaho and Southeast BC. If there is no fresh snowfall places like Switzer Mountain get a little reddish brown coloring to the snow cover from that fine light Palouse clay that makes that region one of the best and biggest wheat fields in the world. It does this with pretty good winds, a Winter constant up here high on the Columbia Basin, but not excessive enough to cause a sand storms.
Once again, just a thought.....
"Sometimes when I sleep at night I think of "Hop on Pop'." G.W. Bush |
|
People, Places, Cultures and Resources