As the globe has warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age, alarms concerning retreating glaciers have been sounded worldwide. The reason for the warming remains hotly disputed: alarmists blame it on manmade CO2 while skeptics say natural factors are just as much at play, if not more so.
Image: Norwegian glace, for illustration purpose. Source: NASA/John Sonntag, public domain.
Very little retreat in Norway this past summer
Yesterday Norwegian NRK here reported “several of the largest glaciers have almost not shrunk” during this past summer.
“This year, several places in the country have almost not shrunk,” according to the Norwegian NVE.
Since 1962 experts have been monitoring the Nigardsbreen glacier, an arm of Jostedalsbreen located in Vestland county. The summer of 2020 has seen the sixth slowest result in about half a century. “If we get more such summers to come, then the glacier front will grow forward again,” says Even Loe in Statkraft.
“The glacier is named after the farm Nigard, which was crushed by the glacier in 1748. At that time the front of the glacier stopped about 4.5 km further ahead than it is today,” reports the NRK.
Experts attribute this past summer’s stagnation to “a good winter with a lot of snow.”
“The Nigardsbreen glacier has actually grown bigger.”
Glaciologist Hallgeir Elvehøywhich said the glacier retreated 4 meters, “something that is very small compared to previous ones.”
“The trend is largely the same elsewhere in the country,” he says.
Although many glaciers have decreased relatively little this year, the Norwegian experts still remain pessimistic about their future, should warming continue as the models project. “But in all the gloom, there is also a small glimmer of light, should the rainfall continue.”
“There is nothing in the way that the climate system can give us several years with so much snow, and then it will have an effect.”
Jostedalsbreen
There are many nice photos and videos on the web.
I’ve walked on glacial ice and subsequent landforms, but not those.
Highly recommend the experiences.
In the USA, Sunrise (a named end-of-road destination; 1950 m.) at Mt. Rainier National Park provides views.
Photo. I’ve worked on the trails here. You are welcome.
“The glacier is named after the farm Nigard, which was crushed by the glacier in 1748.”
No-one is likely to set up a farm directly in front of an advancing glacier, so the glacier musts have been some distance away when the farm was running. But that means that the temperatures must have been higher than the eighteenth century temperatures. How could humans survive in such conditions! We know that the slight, slow retreat of the glaciers spells doom for us all.
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