Glaciers steadily retreat on Mt. Rainier
Nobody plans to wrap Mount Rainier in a reflective sheet to keep it icy cold.
Yet the glaciers coating Tacoma's backyard mountain share troubling symptoms with the dwindling Gurshen glacier of Andermatt, Switzerland.
The glistening masses of ice and snow that make 14,411-foot Mount Rainier shine aren't as impressive as they once were. The mountain shoulders 34 square miles of year-round ice, but at least five of its largest glaciers - Nisqually, Winthrop, Tahoma, South Tahoma and Carbon - are smaller than ever.
When Swiss workers installed an $83 million blanket to stop Gurshen from wasting away this summer, scientists pointed to global warming as the reason why.
And while access to ski resorts isn't an issue on Mount Rainier, its glaciers and hundreds of others in Washington's Cascade Mountains are as vulnerable as those in the Alps.
"Glaciers are really excellent indicators of climate change," said Jon Riedel, a North Cascades National Park geologist who tracks the health of six glaciers at North Cascades and Mount Rainier national parks. "The issue isn't whether it's getting warmer. Of course, it is.
"The question is how fast and what are the consequences."
People value glaciers not only for their beauty and as a lure to mountaineers, but also because glaciers are reservoirs. Glaciers hold water that eventually melts into streams, helps drive hydroelectric systems and sustains fish.
Since the 1970s, virtually all of the glaciers outside the world's polar regions have shrunk, said Andrew Fountain, a Portland State University glaciologist who has studied glaciers throughout the western United States. Seventy-one percent of the West's glaciated areas are in Washington.
"You don't find an advancing glacier anymore," Fountain said.
Scientists describe growing glaciers as advancing. Retreat, in contrast, illustrates what happens when glaciers shrink.
"Mount Rainier's glaciers aren't going away any time soon, but they're going to get a lot smaller," said Fountain.
Most people notice the change at the glacier's terminus, also called the toe or snout, where the thaw is most obvious.
"It's the graveyard for glacial ice," said Bill Bidlake, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist based in Tacoma.
Glaciers need new snow to survive. The decline of Washington's glaciers parallels a record of dwindling mountain snowpack measured between 1950 and 2000, scientists said.
Continue reading this story from the Tacoma News Tribune:
Changing climate, melting mountains
