A new paper published in the Journal of Glaciology finds there has been a large [78%] deceleration of glacier melt in the Glacier Bay area of Alaska and British Columbia over the past 63+ years. According to the authors, "For the full period (1995–2011) the average mass loss was 3.93 ± 0.89 Gigatons per year, compared with 17.8 Gigatons per year for the post-Little Ice Age (1770–1948) rate," a deceleration of 78%.
Full paper here:
Mass balance in the Glacier Bay area of Alaska, USA, and British Columbia, Canada, 1995–2011, using airborne laser altimetry
Austin J. JOHNSON, Christopher F. LARSEN, Nathaniel MURPHY, Anthony A. ARENDT, S. Lee ZIRNHELD
Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA
ABSTRACT. The Glacier Bay region of southeast Alaska, USA, and British Columbia, Canada, has undergone major glacier retreat since the Little Ice Age (LIA). We used airborne laser altimetry elevation data acquired between 1995 and 2011 to estimate the mass loss of the Glacier Bay region over four time periods (1995–2000, 2000–05, 2005–09, 2009–11). For each glacier, we extrapolated from center-line profiles to the entire glacier to estimate glacier-wide mass balance, and then averaged these results over the entire region using three difference methods (normalized elevation, area-weighted method and simple average). We found that there was large interannual variability of the mass loss since 1995 compared with the long-term (post-LIA) average. For the full period (1995–2011) the average mass loss was 3.93 ± 0.89 Gt a–1 (0.6 ± 0.1 m w.e. a–1), compared with 17.8 Gt a–1 for the post-LIA (1770–1948) rate. Our mass loss rate is consistent with GRACE gravity signal changes for the 2003–10 period. Our results also show that there is a lower bias due to center-line profiling than was previously found by a digital elevation model difference method.
Related:
Glaciers - Science and Nonsense
Prior posts on glaciers
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