Photo: AP / David Goldman
A new study is warning how hundreds of glaciers in Canada's Arctic are shrinking and many are at risk of disappearing completely, according to The Guardian.
The study used satellite imagery to conduct an unprecedented inventory of 1,700 glaciers in northern Ellesmere Island and traced how the shifted between 1999 and 2015.
The results displayed how warming temperatures could be affecting ice across the region, including sprawling glaciers to the 200-meter thick ice shelves, according to Adrienne White, a glaciologist at the University of Ottawa.
“It’s an area that’s very difficult to study,” said White. “Logistically it’s very hard to get to and even with satellite imagery – for the longest time Google Earth didn’t even have complete imagery – it was kind of the forgotten place.”
The study was published in the Journal of Glaciology last month found that glaciers shrank by more than 1,700 sq. km. over the 16-year period, which represented a loss of around 6%.
A previous study conducted of glaciers in the region which only used aerial photos and did not include the ice shelves displayed a loss of 927 sq. km. between 1959 and 2000, which may hint that the pace of ice loss is increasing.
White said 1,353 of the 1,773 glaciers tracked were found to have shrunk significantly, while some had already disappeared altogether.
“What we found is a loss of three complete ice shelves,” she said. “In terms of glaciers that terminate on land, we’ve lost three small ice caps.”
The study also found that none of the glaciers had any signs of growth.
White said the study corresponded to the changes researchers observed during their visits to the island.
“We see a lot more icebergs,” said White. “Where there was one continuous ice shelf, we now see individual icebergs broken up, we see a lot more crevasses.”
She said that was attributable to how Canada's Arctic is warming at one of the fastest rates of anywhere on earth since northern Ellesmere Island had its annual average temperature in the region increase by 3.6C between 1948 and 2016.
She said there was a particular shift during the 1990s that included a "sudden increase in warming," which saw temperatures spike at 0.78C per decade between 1995 and 2016.
“These increases were greatest in autumn and winter,” she said. “So what you end up with is a lot more melt.”
The most direct impact of that ice loss is rising sea loss but it's also a major loss of the region's unique ecosystems, such as the freshwater lakes that are formed when water flowing from a glacier is trapped in a floating ice shelf.
“When these glaciers break away, all of a sudden there’s nothing holding back these ecosystems that have been growing and developing for thousands of years,” said White. “And they’re gone before we even have the chance to study them.”
White's study also used research done on glaciers from a nearby island which suggested many of the glaciers on northern Ellesmere Island may not be high enough to accumulate the necessary amount of snow to counter their melting pace.
She said, “Without growth, that glacier is just in a state of loss. It will disappear if climates don’t change.”
-WN.com, Maureen Foody
