Image: Ulyana Horodyskyj
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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
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Himalayan glaciers are melting and retreating at their edges because of global warming. But they also conceal a more ominous effect of climate change: they are deflating. They are losing internal ice mass to melting, which can substantially hasten their disappearance. Scientists have recently captured real-time video showing a glacier purging its own meltwater, and at rates far faster than the experts had imagined.
To obtain the video, Ulyana Horodyskyj, a geologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, climbed to 5,000 meters on the Ngozumpa Glacier in Nepal [below].
She embedded time-lapse video cameras in the scree-covered ice peaks, which filmed interior glacial lakes every hour for two weeks. Scientists had surmised that such lakes slowly fill over time with water from surface melt, but Horodyskyj's videos show that the lakes can empty in just two days and then refill in less than a week, and repeat the cycle again and again, flushing out large volumes of melted ice through interior channels that eventually lead down into underlying rock or out to the glacier's edges. The regular purging indicates that far more ice is melting than previous thought. In one instance Horodyskyj scrambled down to a lake after it emptied to inspect the white ice walls that had been exposed below the high-water line [below]. The lake would soon fill in.
Horodyskyj’s video of the rapid draining and refilling can be seen below. (Scientific American slowed down the time-lapse video to improve viewing.) Keep an eye on the right side of the lake.
The rise and fall of water in glacial lakes can also aggravate calving—the sudden collapse of ice walls alongside the water. Horodyskyj caught one collapse in a video at a different lake [below]. Watch the wall at the center, back shore.
Deflation may cause glaciers to disappear faster than the melting that occurs at their edges. "South American and Himalayan glaciers are losing ice the most rapidly, but most of it is from vertical deflation," says Horodyskyj, who reported some of her findings at the recent American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. Certain glaciers on the north side of Mount Everest, for example, have lost 100 meters in height over the past century, she says.
Photos by Ang Phula Sherpa. Videos courtesy of University of Colorado.
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29 Comments
Add CommentDepressingly impressive; great work, and I hope it works to raise acceptance of the changing conditions on Earth and motivates more people to do something remedial.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou seem to be very easily impressed. Neither video justifies such extravagant claims as far as I can see. The only thing that's depressing is the woefully inadequate methodology!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's so great to be a curmudgeon. You never have to go into the field, take measurements, or do any research at all. You just sit in your nice, overstuffed chair and take pot shots. And, if even that becomes too taxing, you can make up your own data and become a conspiracy theorist or a "social conservative."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd prefer to avoid ad hominem attacks. I want to know why it's acceptable among AGW enthusiasts to extrapolate unscientifically from a small data set to "the end of the world".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe first sentence of the article is asserted as if "the debate is over" but the language in the rest of the article is less certain- "[glaciers] are losing internal ice mass to melting, which can substantially hasten their disappearance." "...the lakes can empty in just two days and then refill in less than a week, and repeat the cycle again and again." "Deflation may cause glaciers to disappear faster than the melting that occurs at their edges."
"Can" and "may" are properly cautious terminology for scientists and do not justify AGW as a foregone conclusion. The following sentence is almost completely lost in the article and not sufficiently expanded on: "The regular purging indicates that far more ice is melting than previous[ly] thought."
The article discusses new data that go into detail never before available. This is the real issue for me; we have a very small overall data set for global temperature changes over time, which is a poor basis for extrapolation- it's basically mistaking weather for climate.
This is exacerbated by poor choices for baselines, like deciding a priori that the historical "normal" global temperature is the period immediately following the eruption of Krakatoa.
Finally I'd like to point out the mention of regular, cyclical changes in the lakes; the article does not address how long these cycles have been going on or if their rate has changed, or by how much. The undertone is that they're accelerating but that's an unjustified conclusion from the data.
I thoroughly enjoy the people who attach to something so personally so much that they avoid critical thinking about the issue any longer. The discussion surrounding global warming always arouses such heated debates it's quite humorous. I love how people dig up and cite a few sources and claim to be experts on the topic. The mark of a educated mind is to continually question everything. The moment you make up your mind is the very moment you've stopped learning and that's what is absolutely necessary on issues as novel and dynamic as the topic at hand. The best approach towards anything is a proactive one, anything but is futile. If a solution is ever to be reached on anything then everyone's mind must always be open. Closing it is pure ignorance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat do you do for a living sir? The level of certainty that you speak with most certainly indicates that you must be involved in a field of science. Otherwise............... :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a ridiculously misleading article. The only thing that is proven is that glaciers produce meltwater. You can't demonstrate an increase of meltwater in one summer's observations. Glaciers advance and retreat as shown by multiple terminal moraines. If you want to prove a glacier is melting You must measure the size of the glacier. This is reminiscent of another video posted a few months ago of a rapidly moving glacier claiming to support the global warming fantasy. A careful look revealed that the end of the glacier never changed nor did it's height on the sides of the valley.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt appears that the lake drains somewhat after an ice dam at the outlet melts. This is the only resonable explanation for the rise and fall of the lake. The video of the residents moving boulders seems to imply that the meltwater moved them there. They are much too massive for the small amount of water to have moved them. Go to any rapidly flowing mountain stream and observe the size of the much smaller boulders that do not move.
So glaciers melt during the summer... Is that what we are seeing evidence of? Who would have thought..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUlyana here. These are first results from the team’s work this summer. The monitoring of these lakes will continue into the long-term. What is interesting is that we now have “real-time” data to work with: from field measurements and hourly imagery, we get a more intimate look into the workings of a glacial system. We also can put numbers on change. The lake that partially drained sent the equivalent of approximately 42 Olympic-sized pools of water down-glacier.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResearchers have been studying this glacier for the last decade and have long suspected a conduit (connection) from this lake to further down-glacier into “Spillway Lake,” a large lake that has been growing at the terminus (end of the glacier). We have now seen evidence for this pathway, from the imagery. This is important: as the smaller lakes drain their water down-glacier, they can cause the water level in the large terminal lake to increase. If that level gets high enough, the terminal lake can breach its moraine and send water quickly down-valley in a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF). As an example, this happened in the mid-80s in the Khumbu Himal region, where millions of cubic meters of water rushed down-valley, causing $1.5 million in damages.
So, this project is driven by scientific curiosity as well as hazard awareness: what are the lake patterns of drain and fill during the melt season? What about over the years? What does that do to the water level in the terminal lake? These lakes are excellent indicators of changing conditions. We hope that our work will help the mountain people down-valley.
Boring boring boring repetitive reports about our climate changing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt has changed literally thousands of times over millions of years.
It proves nothing about the cause of the change, which is almost certainly due to factors we neither understand yet, nor control, nor contribute to.
Why not use a low level dye, or equivalent, for "upstream" lakes and then measure the concentrations in the "downstream" ones...? Seems more straightforward than picture taking and would establish a scientifically measurable connection...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, having seen this drain/fill in action now, that's the idea for next season. But, there's a lot of science that can get extracted from the imagery as well. For the calving lake, for example, you can see the fractures propagate in the ice, then see the collapse and then get volume input estimates from the collapse. We set up a lot of field experiments while out there, including a water logger that measured lake water level changes. We also used an inflatable raft to get around the lakes, so that appears in the photos. It provides some sense of scale, which is useful, since it's hard to imagine how large some of these lakes are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWOW. Congratulations to her. An impressive, and frightening, accomplishment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting article, thank you for the insight into some of the methodology in this field. As someone who has experience doing science work in distant and sometimes difficult to access locales, I appreciate some of the difficulties in just getting answers to basic questions like, how does the water level in the lakes change? We can't just make assumptions about this stuff, we need to measure it, get data, etc. Nice work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are far too reasonable sir... to ever be invited to a late night talk show.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUlyana, please don't feel these attacks on the misleading article to be attacks on you work. You seem to get it. Keep measuring and reporting. We need data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"change, which is almost certainly due to factors we neither understand yet, nor control, nor contribute to."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpeak for your self. Clearly you do not understand so this is your unsubstantiated belief but there are thousands of pieces of research which, if you did understand them, strongly suggest the opposite to your personal beliefs.
HowardB, do you know if the light at the end of the tunnel in front of you is good old daylight, or another train coming right at you? it is investigations such as this with the glaciers that will eventually enlighten and inform us as to what is coming, what it will do to us, and maybe what we can do about it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile I understand what you probably intend to say, your response does not say it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInvestigations like this contribute nothing to the search for a cause. Valuable and interesting and meritorious as Horodyskyj's work is, it is only describing the change in climate, not it's cause or whatever mysterious action we might be able to take to change it, assuming of course there is reason to change it.
It is quite plausible that the current change might reverse in ten or twenty years time. It is also quite plausible that the change taking place may benefit man kind as a whole and not be the claimed disaster that the establishment says it is.
I'll miss the beach and the whole state of Florida but of course there is no climate change going on... For a visual explanation http://radar.zhaw.ch/bluemarble3000_en.html Enjoy and think about where to buy beach property.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is astonishing to read these philistine remarks regarding environmental changes that threaten to transform nations and the world our children and grandchildren will live in. Initially it was global warming that was denied, then the human contribution to it. What will follow?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe world isn't getting warmer,
and if it is, human activity doesn't have anything to do with it,
and if it does, it's only a trivial contribution,
and if it's more than that it's only a few islanders in the Pacific who will be affected,
And if the damage is greater, there's nothing we can do about it.
And anyway, it's happened a thousand times before!
Try telling that to your granddaughter when Dallas looks like Phoenix and Phoenix looks like hell.
David - Dallas
As I understand it, when some of my ancestors walked from Siberia to Alaska some 12,000 years ago the ocean was 280 feet lower than it is now. Global warming has caused the increase. At this rate in another 12,000 years the first 240 floors of the Empire State Building will be underwater. Why should not a natural process continue?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo your ideal of knowledge is learn it but do not apply it. How very Brontosaurus of you. Of course they had a brain the size of a peanut, no knowledge of astronomy and once they attained an adequate weight and height they had few predators and enough stomachs to eat anything.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have avoided the ice age that was due about 1,000 years ago because we put the CO2 balance off enough to continue warming but their is one itty bitty problem with your head in the sand attitude. Something like 60% of living humans live by the sea and the weather has been going through fits the last several years (also the warmest years based on biological evidence.) The world does go through several major cycles and each has an effect on the climate. The sun also goes through several cycles of which we have tracked maybe 5,000 years of which is a little pinch in cosmic time. But hey what the hell we have intelligence nobody said we had to use it.
I'll join the easily impressed bandwagon, considering the dire implications of glacial melting are glacial.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAny report touching on AGW will draw a large number of kneejerk responses that have little or nothing to do with the specific content of the article and deal only in generalities. HowardB, Geekstatus,Curmudgeon are good examples here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese responses will usually also assume that the authors of the article (like everyone who accepts AGW) are liars or idiots, and will assume a baseline background knowledge of none: "almost certainly due to factors we neither understand yet, nor control, nor contribute to". Where does the "almost certainly" of this proud skeptic come from? How does he KNOW that we do not contribute the the GW factors (as he says) if we don't understand those factors? He's just making shit up.
For the "skeptics" pushing the dogmatic anti-AGW position, every article must start from zero and prove the entire AGW case from the beginning.
The authors of this article probably should have kept these things in mind when they wrote their article.
Any report touching on AGW will draw a large number of kneejerk responses that have little or nothing to do with the specific content of the article and deal only in generalities. HowardB, Geekstatus,Curmudgeon are good examples here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese responses will usually also assume that the authors of the article (like everyone who accepts AGW) are liars or idiots, and will assume a baseline background knowledge of none: "almost certainly due to factors we neither understand yet, nor control, nor contribute to". Where does the "almost certainly" of this proud skeptic come from? How does he KNOW that we do not contribute the the GW factors (as he says) if we don't understand those factors? He's just making shit up.
For the "skeptics" pushing the dogmatic anti-AGW position, every article must start from zero and prove the entire AGW case from the beginning.
The authors of this article probably should have kept these things in mind when they wrote their article.
Hansen's 1988 model predicted that given that CO2 emissions have grown linearly, we'd now have a global mean temperature of 1C anomaly from the baseline period of 1951-80. 2010's anomaly as recorded by GISS (the organisation Hansen heads up) http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.txt
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisis 0.63C anomaly, a significant difference. 2011's anomaly will be much less, based on monthly temperatures which have been produced already.
There are 3 dataset producers, GISS, CRU and NOAA. CRU had 1998 as being the warmest year, NOAA as 2004, GISS as 2011. 2011 is the 12th warmest year according to CRU records and 11th according to NOAA. According to CRU, the 11th warmest year was way back in 1997. No scientific explanation can account for 2011 being colder than 14 years previously, given that the theory is that CO2 should be increasing the temperature year on year, and the only identified natural forcing agents (sun, volcanoes, ENSO) can not suppress 14 years worth of manmade activity. The global mean temperature has hardly moved since 2003 which is way below what the predicted effect of CO2 emissions would be.
So, in answer to your question. Is the globe warming:-
No. It warmed from 1978 to either 1998 or 2003, dependent on your viewpoint. Since then it's been flat. Is CO2 responsible for global warming? Demonstrably not.
Type above. Should have read "CRU had 1998 as being the warmest year, NOAA as 2004, GISS as 2010".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi Ulyana, interesting work!! Is the change in lake water level due to precipitation events? June is the month when the monsoon season starts. Also, in the high altitude areas of the Dudh Kosi river basin, precipitation during evening and night is quite normal due to thermal convection. Looking forward to read the final results.
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