Significant rise in glacier loss on Juneau Icefield: Study

New Delhi: A new study found discovered that since 2010, there has been a significant rise in glacier loss on JuneauIcefield, which is located on the border between Alaska and British Columbia, Canada.

They observed that between 1770 and 1979, the annual rate of glacier volume loss was roughly constant, ranging from 0.65 to 1.01 km3, and between 1979 and 2010 it increased to 3.08 to 3.72 km3.

The team, comprising academic institutions from the UK, USA, and Europe claimed that the rate of ice loss doubled to 5.91 km3 annually between 2010 and 2020, there was a notable acceleration.

The study published in Nature Communications found that, compared to 1948–1979, the rates of glacier area decrease throughout the icefield were five times greater between 2015 and 2019.

“In the Juneau icefield, the total amount of ice lost between 1770 and 2020 (315.3 ± 237.5 km3) was equivalent to slightly less than 25% of the initial ice volume” it said.

The report suggested that in addition 108 glaciers have entirely vanished and 100% of the glaciers mapped in 2019 have receded in comparison to their positions in 1770.

The study’s senior lecturer at Newcastle University, Dr. Bethan Davies, led the research and expressed concerns, saying, “Our research found a rapid acceleration since the early 21st century in the rate of glacier loss across the Juneau icefield” 

“Since ice loss occurs along the entire surface, a significantly larger area is impacted, Alaskan icefields, which are primarily flat, plateau icefields, are especially vulnerable to accelerated melt as the temperature warms” he said.

The scientists believe that the processes they saw inJuneau are probably going to have an impact on other comparable icefields in Alaska and Canada, as well as Greenland, Norway, and other high-Arctic regions.

Dr. Davies stated, “This work has demonstrated that different processes can accelerate melt, which implies that current glacier projections may be too low and underestimate future glacier melt.”

Dr. Robert McNabb, a lecturer in remote sensing at Ulster University said, “This research was particularly interesting because it allowed us to extract elevation from thousands of old aerial pictures, giving us a really precise understanding of the icefield’s long-term history”.

“It was something like assembling the world’s most difficult jigsaw puzzle to piece together this archive of images, which was gathered between 70 and 50 years ago, but the clarity of the imagery allowed us to recreate the icefield elevation during the pre-satellite era for the first time” he said.