Warming climate shrinking Glacier Park's glaciers

[cal04]

This summer, for the first time in Glacier National Park's 100-year history, Gem Glacier was entirely snow-free, a glistening sheet of bare ice sweating dark and blue under a relentless sun.

Many miles away, a bubbling mountain stream turned to a trickle, fading finally, underground. It was one of many streambeds that dried up this year, and one of many more to come.

"There's still water down there under the cobble," Dan Fagre said of that stream, "but it's not so good if you're a fish."

Fagre, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, has been monitoring Glacier's glaciers for years, studying the many implications of retreating ice and snow. This summer's disappearing streams, he said, are but the latest signs of a rapidly changing climate driving an equally rapidly changing park system.

(snip)
Fagre initially pegged "zero" at about 2030, the year his models suggested the last of the glaciers would be gone from their namesake park.

"But we're about eight and a half years ahead of schedule," he said. "Our initial projection has proved too conservative. They're going faster than we thought."

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2007-10-11-glacier-park_N.htm?csp=34

[XemaSab]

1. "Our initial projection has proved too conservative. They're going faster than we thought."

Huh. Who'da thunk it? :P