Alaska is the coldest place in the world and has a lot of snow, which makes many people want to visit it. In these summer days, there was a problem of hot snow that, once it warmed up, started to melt, turn into water, and come out. So when this happens, it causes a lot of loss.
Ice is melting So Quick
Using satellites, photographs, and old rock piles, we were able to measure ice loss across the Juneau glacier from the end of the “Little Rain” (250 years ago) to the present.
We found that the ice began to shrink after the last ice age ended around 1770. This ice loss remained constant until around 1979, when it accelerated. It accelerated again in 2010, doubling the previous rate. The area’s glaciers declined five times faster between 2015 and 2019 than from 1979 to 1990.
The world’s hardest jigsaw
We use satellite records to reconstruct the size of the glacier and how it behaved, but this really limits us to the last 50 years. To go back, we need a different approach. To go back 250 years, we mapped moraines, which are large piles of debris deposited in glacier basins, and where glaciers have dug and left bedrock.
ASH CK