Activity 2.2 – Cyrosphere: Iceberg Glacier in Glacier National Park

1940 T.J. Hileman, courtesy of Glacier National Park Archives

2008 Lisa McKeon, USGS

2017 Google Maps Street View

●      Problem

Icecaps and glaciers make up 68.7% of the words freshwater, but they’re melting fast. The breakage and melting of ice sheets and alpine glaciers are important indicators of the presence of global warming and climate change, which is threatening the ocean’s ecosystem while simultaneously contributing to rising sea levels. Climate change has significantly impacted glaciers all over the world for the worse as the earth’s temperature continues to rise, as it has been for more than a century. The appearance of global glacier recession has led to investigations and modeled predictions- with evidence through repeat photography- that the glaciers in Glacier National Park will all have melted by the year 2030. Iceberg Glacier was located in Glacier National Park, Montana; it used to be an alpine glacier, but has melted exponentially since the 1940’s.

●      Explanation

The National Park Service states, “Over the last 100 years, the planet’s surface has warmed by about 1.5°F. In recent years, Northwest Montana has warmed at about twice that rate” (Climate Change, par. 1). The glacier has melted into Iceberg Lake, and now it is practically gone. As you can see, in the google maps picture above, there are only a few large patches of ice left when it used to be a large glacier covering most of the mountain, seen in the first photo from 1940. Just twelve years ago there was much more of a glacier than there is today. While there is other evidence of glacial melting from high-tech methods recording depth and mass, the photography over the years of melting glaciers are communicating to the world just how dramatically we are changing our atmosphere. As the glacier continues to melt it will fill up the lake below, and in just over a decade the only evidence left of Iceberg Glacier will be in pictures from years in the past.

Sources

McKeon, Lisa “Iceberg Glacier in Glacier National Park” USGS Repeat Photography Project 2008 https://www.usgs.gov/centers/norock/science/iceberg-glacier?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects Accessed February 11, 2020. 

“Iceburg Glacier, Glacier National Park” Google Maps, August 2017 https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8120134,-113.7480259,3a,75y,243.31h,99.31t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipP8_skWo-OtZ4OuTmL9tX9Zo0lzYKqarcYrNDp1!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipP8_skWo-OtZ4OuTmL9tX9Zo0lzYKqarcYrNDp1%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya202.40024-ro-0-fo100!7i7680!8i3286

Accessed February 11, 2020.

“Climate Change” National Park Service, February 6, 2020 https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/climate-change.htm Accessed February 11, 2020.