Satellite imagery shows hundreds of glaciers shrinking as the average annual temperature rises 3.6C in 70 years
Ashifa Kassam reports for The Guardian:
Hundreds of glaciers in Canada’s high Arctic are shrinking and many are at risk of disappearing completely, an unprecedented inventory of glaciers in the country’s northernmost island has revealed.
Using satellite imagery, researchers cataloged more than 1,700 glaciers in northern Ellesmere Island and traced how they had changed between 1999 and 2015.
The results offered a glimpse into how warming temperatures may be affecting ice in the region, from glaciers that sprawl across the land to the 200-meter thick ice shelves, said 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.”
White’s study, published last month in the Journal of Glaciology, found that the glaciers had shrunk by more than 1,700 sq km of over a 16-year period, representing a loss of about 6%.
A previous study of glaciers in the region – which used air photos and did not include ice shelves – showed a loss of 927 sq km between 1959 and 2000, hinting that the pace of loss may be increasing.
