Study: Alaska's Juneau Icefield Losing 50K Gallons Per Second

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Facts

  • A new study published last week in Nature Communications has claimed that the snow-covered area of the Juneau Icefield, which extends from Canada's British Columbia into southeast Alaska, is melting at an 'incredibly worrying' rate.1
  • Researchers found that one of the largest areas of interconnected glaciers in North America has annually lost 1.4 cubic miles (5.8 cubic km) of ice between 2010 and 2020.2
  • The current flow of ice into water is estimated to average 50K gallons per second — 4.6 times faster than in the 1980s. According to the study, 64 Juneau Icefield glaciers disappeared between 2005 and 2019, compared to only four between 1948 and 2005.3
  • Researchers drew on glacial geomorphological mapping and historical records from the Little Ice Age (1770-1850), archive aerial photographs and topographic maps from 1948 to 1979, multiple yield glacier outlines, satellite imagery, and digital elevation models.4
  • The total ice loss across the icefield from 1770 to 2020 was found to be nearly one-quarter of its original volume, with the study blaming man-made global warming for the shrinkage.5
  • According to the researchers, other icefields in high-Arctic locations — including Canada and Greenland — could melt due to similar conditions, further contributing to higher sea levels.6

Sources: 1Smithsonian Magazine, 2New York Times, 3FOX News, 4Nature, 5USA Today and 6Reuters.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by Alaska Beacon. The melting of the Juneau Icefield is likely to become irreversible. There's less snow summer after summer due to global warming, ice is exposed to sunshine and higher temperatures, and glaciers are melting increasingly faster. If no solution is found soon, this self-perpetuating feedback loop of loss of snow and ice is set to continue even if the world stops warming.
  • Narrative B, as provided by The Spectator Australia. Despite all the climate alarmism over the alleged melting of the Juneau Icefield, the world has actually seen new glaciers form and grow. Geological evidence tells us that Earth will eventually enter a long — and deadly — ice age instead of warming. And the less winter snow melts during summer, the closer that tipping point actually is.

Predictions