All Glaciers of the Month

Illiniza is a glacier-covered stratovolcano located 55 km southwest of Quito, Ecuador. It has two peaks 1.8 km apart, Illiniza Sur (5,248 m asl*) and Illiniza Norte (5,126 m asl*), and forms a prominent landmark to the west of the Interandean Valley.

Illiniza Norte is a remnant of the main volcanic edifice, while Illiniza Sur is a younger stratovolcano of andesitic-dacitic composition, containing more moisture than former. Therefore, Sur has permanent snow and glaciers.

Glaciers, known as Earth’s most powerful erosive force, erode the ground beneath them by up to ten centimetres annually as they melt. This erosion reduces the pressure on underlying volcanoes, thereby heightening the chances of an eruption. A decrease in pressure favours magma production at depth, as rocks under lower pressure melt at lower temperatures.

When volcanoes erupt, they release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, that contributes to the acceleration of the warming process, creating a feedback loop. 

Ecuador’s glaciers are found in the Cordillera Occidental and Cordillera Oriental mountain ranges. From the 16th to the first half of the 19th Century, there was extensive glaciation. Since then, the equilibrium line between ablation and accumulation has shifted upwards by 250 m, which is still significantly underestimated.

(*Illiniza Sur/Norte Statistics as of 2024 – www.volcanodiscovery.com)

Mount Rainier, a volcano in the US State of Washington, is the highest peak in the Cascade Range at 4,392 m and is home to 28 named glaciers and numerous unnamed snowfields covering an area of around 78 km². The glaciers of Mount Rainier are important indicators of climate change and a crucial source of water, as they supply five major watersheds and are a critical source of water for the Puget Sound region near Seattle.

Three of the largest glaciers in the contiguous United States are located on the north and east slopes of Mount Rainier: Carbon Glacier, Winthrop Glacier and Emmons Glacier.

Each of the three glaciers has an extensive blanket of supraglacial debris at its terminus. However, recent research shows that each glacier has responded to the climate changes of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries in different ways. Winthrop Glacier has remained constant, while Emmons Glacier has the largest area (11.1 km²) and has thickened and advanced. Carbon Glacier has thinned and retreated since 1970, although it has the largest volume of any glacier on the mountain, due to its unusual thickness. This glacier has shaped the landscape of Mount Rainier and the history of Mount Rainier National Park. It also plays an important role in shaping the future of the mountain and its national park.

Carbon Glacier has the lowest terminus elevation of any active glacier in the 48 contiguous states (1,102 m). Its highest point is at 3,722 m asl*, with an elevation range of 2,620 m asl*. During one episode in the last major ice age, the glacier probably flowed into the Puget Sound and merged with the Puget lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet.

(*Carbon Glacier Statistics as of 2021 – Beason et al., 2023)

The Chimborazo National Park – Reserva de Producción de Fauna Chimborazo in Spanish – is a nature reserve that was established in 1987 and includes the volcano of the same name. According to the latest figures, the Chimborazo is 6,267 m asl high; its height was previously given as 6,310 m asl. This inactive volcano is located in the western cordillera of the Andes and is the highest mountain in Ecuador.  It has a diameter of 20 km at its base. As of an altitude of around 5,100 m asl, its summits are completely covered by glaciers. Some glacier arms extend as far down as 4,600 m asl. However, the ice masses on Chimborazo are shrinking as a result of climate change, sharing the fate of almost all glaciers on Earth.

The Chimborazo is a tropical glacier and mainly falls into the category of the so-called warm (temperate) glaciers, where the whole glacier is at the pressure melting point, except for seasonal freezing of the surface layer. It therefore reacts relatively quickly to changes in temperature and is a fast indicator of climate change. Local mountain guides report that ten to twelve years ago the glacier along the normal route to the summit extended up to 150 m further down the mountainside.

The glacier also plays a crucial role in the life and livelihood of the people living nearby, especially in terms of water supply.

The Humboldt Glacier (Pico Humboldt, 4,942 m asl) in the Sierra Nevada National Park was the last of Venezuela’s glaciers. It was downgraded from glacier to ice field this year, as assessments have found the glacier had melted much faster than expected and had shrunk to an area of less than 2 hectares. This means Venezuela has likely become the first country in modern history to lose all its glaciers. Described as a ‘glaciological anomaly’ by some scientists, the Humboldt Glacier would probably have disappeared years ago if it weren’t located on the shadier side of the mountain. And since it is so small, its impact on local water resources will likely be negligible. At the beginning of the 20th century, Venezuela had six glaciers, covering a total area of 1,000 km², but five of the six glaciers had disappeared by 2011. By 2019, these ice tongues had already retreated by 98 percent.

As of 2016, the rate of glacial retreat rose to a peak of 17 percent per year. The melting was likely triggered by climate change, leading to significantly higher temperatures at high altitudes. In 2023/24, recorded temperatures for some months 3-4° C above the long-term average. Glacier melting also causes feedback loop effects, amplifying ice melt: dark rock absorbs more of the sun’s energy, leading to more warming, which in turn leads to more ice melting.

Link:

https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2024/06/05/venezuela-is-losing-its-last-glacier-what-does-this-mean-exactly/

The Weißkugel/Palla Bianca, 3,738 m asl, is located at the border between South Tyrol and North Tyrol and therefore between Italy and Austria. It is the third highest mountain in Austria after Großglockner and Wildspitze and the second highest in the Ötztal Alps/Alpi Venoste. Thanks to its central location, at the intersection of the Schnalskamm and Weißkamm ridges, the summit offers an impressive view, stretching from the Bernese Alps to the Bernina Group and the Dolomites to the Schober Group.

In 2022, the Hintereisferner glacier lost 5% of its volume – in just one year. This corresponds to almost 20 million m³ of water, about as much as the city of Innsbruck consumes in drinking water in 20 months. In previous years, the average volume loss was 1-2% per year.

Studies show that the climate crisis hits hardest at high altitudes. In the Alps temperatures have risen by 2°C degrees over the course of the 20th Century, already exceeding the 1.5°C Paris Agreement limit. This impacts not only on glaciers, with ice melting and permafrost thawing, and the resulting mudslides and avalanches, but the entire ecosystem. To survive hotter conditions, many species are forced to seek cooler higher mountain regions.

With a surface area of 17 km² and an estimated volume of 2 km³, the Adamello Glacier, located on the border of the regions Lombardy and Trentino, is the biggest of its kind in the Italian Alps. It comprises six units, i.e. Pian di Neve Plateau, Miller Superiore, Salarno, Adamé, Corno di Salarno, Mandrone, which together represent 1/4 of Lombardy’s glacier area and extends several hundred meters in altitude (2530 m – 3440 m a.s.l.) with an estimated maximum ice thickness of 260 m.

In recent years it has lost much of its area and ice mass due to increasing air temperatures, surface albedo feedback loops and a decrease in snowfall that could slow down its melting. Snow melt onset has shifted from mid-May to mid-April and no ice accumulation has been recorded in the last two decades. Since the Little Ice Age (14th – 19th century), the retreat of the Adamello glacier ice sheet is estimated to be 2.1 km in length and 900 m in height.

The comparative pictures show the glacier in August 1891/2020 and are courtesy of the On the Trail of the Glaciers project, promoted by the non-profit association Macromicro.

Glaciers are shrinking in size and mass worldwide. This is a story about one of these glaciers: the Adamello Glacier in the Italian Alps. It explores an intimate visit to this ice giant and reflects on its fate of melting and contamination. While doing so, it also contemplates on how we as a human community may change our relation to the glaciers of this world and what it would mean if we gave them a space in our hearts in addition to our minds.   This project was realized as part of the Master’s Degree of Environmental Humanities at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.   Click on the link below to read “On the Death of a Glacier”   Author: Tim Jonay Gutsche

The Rhône Glacier, which extends from 2197 to 3600 m a.s.l., is located in the Valais, a canton in southern Switzerland, near the Italian border. The glacier has an average width of around 2 km and covers an area of approximately 17 km². It is the largest glacier in the Urner Alps and the source of the Rhône river, which flows to the Mediterranean Sea.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the glacier was a major tourist attraction due to its tongue, which back then reached far down into the valley at Gletsch. The glacier is rapidly shrinking and is now only the fifth largest glacier in Switzerland.

In recent decades, the glacier has lost a considerable amount of its mass due to climate change. Its surface is dominated by large crevasses and ice caves. The melting of the glacier ice and the change in runoff regimes are causing serious geo-hydrological problems.

We owe these wonderful images to Hugues Thiebault, member of Mountain Wilderness France, and to his great-grandfather Emmanuel Bigeard, moved by a passion for the mountains that has been passed down through the centuries.

Aneto is the highest mountain in the Pyrenees and in Aragon, reaching a height of 3,404 m a.s.l. It stands in the Spanish province of Huesca, within the Posets-Maladeta Natural Park, just 6 km south of the French border. It forms the southernmost part of the Maladeta massif, which accounts for more than half of all glaciers in Spain, all located in the Pyrenees.

Its northern side holds the largest glacier in the Pyrenees, covering <0.5 km² in 2022. The Aneto glacier is shrinking rapidly due to rising summer temperatures and reduced winter precipitations over the 20th century: it covered 1.067 km² in 1981 and 0.79 km² in 2005. It is estimated that it has lost more than half its surface area in the last 100 years, and that it may disappear around 2050.

Glacier surface loss in the Pyrenees is remarkable: there were 52 glaciers in 1850 and only 21 in 2020, corresponding to an area of 20.6 km² and 2.3 km² respectively, representing a loss of nearly 90% of the glaciated area.

Many glaciers have been observed in their historical evolution. A paradigmatic case is Glacier des Bossons, in the Mont-Blanc massif. Since its tongue arrived close to Chamonix village in the past, paintings and pictures of its aspect a century or longer ago have been compared with recent pictures quite often.

In this case we will show side by side pictures taken in 1987, after the last oscillation, and in 2011.