North American glaciers melting much faster than 10 years ago - study

Source: The Guardian

North American glaciers melting much faster than 10 years ago – study

Satellite images show glaciers in US and Canada, excluding Alaska, are shrinking four times faster then in previous decade

Emily Holden in Washington
Sat 19 Jan 2019 06.00 GMT

Glaciers in western North America, excluding Alaska, are melting four times faster than in the previous decade, with changes in the jet stream exacerbating the longer-term effects of climate change, according to a new study.

The retreat hasn’t been equal in the US and Canada. The famous alpine ice masses in the Cascade Mountains in the north-west US have largely been spared from the trend.

“The losses we would expect were reduced because we got a lot of additional snow,” said David Shean, a co-author at the University of Washington. “Moving forward we may not be so lucky.”

The jet stream – the currents of fast-flowing air in the atmosphere that affect weather – has shifted, causing more snow in the north-western US and less in south-western Canada, according to the study released in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Changes in the northern hemisphere jet stream are increasingly firmly linked to global warming.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/18/north-america-glacier-melt-study-climate-change

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Related: Heterogeneous Changes in Western North American Glaciers Linked to Decadal Variability in Zonal Wind Strength (Geophysical Research Letters)