Are Mt. Rainier's Glaciers Growing?

Search
Go

Discussion Topic

Return to Forum List
This thread has been locked
Messages 1 - 49 of total 49 in this topic
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Topic Author's Original Post - Mar 10, 2016 - 09:34am PT
We've had a very wet winter here in the Northwest and the snow level has been hovering in the 3500 to 5000 foot range, so we've gotten a lot of snow on Rainier and Adams. I can see both from my office window and they look pretty good.

Glaciers have been receding on the mountains for years. I have some scary pictures of glacial retreat on Rainier; there used to be ice caves above Paradise. Average temperatures have been rising and snowfall, especially last year, has been sparse. It's good to have a heavy snow year.

My question is can glaciers start growing in these condition; heavy winter high altitude snow but generally warmer weather? Is there hope or will we eventually just have rock piles?
bluering

Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Mar 10, 2016 - 09:49am PT
Over a long period of time maybe, like hundreds of years.

Will the glaciers ever return to Yosemite Valley? Not in our lifetime. First the climate needs to invert like it did a long time ago (before fossil fuels were burned in cars). An Ice Age of sorts. Maybe even a Little Ice Age.

Maybe we've turned a climate corner, and are on our way (in a couple/few hundred years) to another cold period. If history is any indicator...

$.02
fear

Ice climber
hartford, ct
Mar 10, 2016 - 10:08am PT
I rememember vividly how totally melted out Success Cleaver was one late June. Just dirty rotten rock and sand all the way up.

In less than two decades of visits I've seen 'em shrink quite a bit.


What'll it look like in 20 centuries? Anyone can guess but we really don't know.


Hardly Visible

Social climber
Llatikcuf WA
Mar 10, 2016 - 10:25am PT
Winemaker,
You might find this of interest:

http://glaciers.research.pdx.edu/photos
donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Mar 10, 2016 - 10:26am PT
Glaciers can recede then grow over short time frames.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Mar 10, 2016 - 10:42am PT
Thanks Hardly, interesting. Crater Glacier on (in, actually) Mount St. Helens is growing!
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Mar 10, 2016 - 12:09pm PT
I hadn't been up to Paradise for years until about 6 years ago.
I was shocked at the changes. Nice, though, that the rangers
don't try to break yer ice axe any more. Pretty sure one good
winter won't make much difference.
clode

Trad climber
portland, or
Mar 10, 2016 - 12:23pm PT
Rainier and Adams? Are you kidding? They already ARE rock piles! But, reality aside, if the rate of accumulation exceeds the rate of ablation (melting), in any given year, then yes, the glaciers WILL advance and/or grow, at least in that year.
stunewberry

Trad climber
Spokane, WA
Mar 10, 2016 - 12:38pm PT
A glacier has formed in the crater of Mt St Helens since the 1980 eruption.

http://gallery.usgs.gov/videos/593 for a time lapse video.


couchmaster

climber
Mar 10, 2016 - 12:43pm PT


A heavy snowstorm or 2 doesn't mean that glacier retreat has ceased. They can start growing in these conditions but they are not is the answer I believe. Not until we get multiple years of it. The glaciers on all PNW shield volcanos appear to be shrinking. I was, however, happy that I didn't buy a season pass last year, but did this year. Great year for snow. By the way, global cooling is predicted for the future, in our lifetimes. Frankly, with population growth, I'd rather see global warming, as you know, ag output/food production will take a hit if it cools down.

Winemaker quote:
"We've had a very wet winter here in the Northwest and the snow level has been hovering in the 3500 to 5000 foot range, so we've gotten a lot of snow on Rainier and Adams. I can see both from my office window and they look pretty good.

Glaciers have been receding on the mountains for years. I have some scary pictures of glacial retreat on Rainier; there used to be ice caves above Paradise. Average temperatures have been rising and snowfall, especially last year, has been sparse. It's good to have a heavy snow year.

My question is can glaciers start growing in these condition; heavy winter high altitude snow but generally warmer weather? Is there hope or will we eventually just have rock piles?"
Spiny Norman

Social climber
Boring, Oregon
Mar 10, 2016 - 02:30pm PT
By the way, global cooling is predicted for the future, in our lifetimes.

That is an interesting claim. So interesting, that I think it requires some documentation.
monolith

climber
state of being
Mar 10, 2016 - 03:15pm PT
Oddball predictions are a dime a dozen.

Usually from some aging professor emeritus and often not in the same field as the prediction applies too.
Mandobob

Trad climber
CO
Mar 10, 2016 - 03:22pm PT
Yes, some support to future cooling. First I must warn that "predictions are always difficult, especially about the the future" :)

No one knows if the future (next few 100 yrs) is warmer, the same as today, or cooler. It is true that when past glacial/interglacial periods are studied there is some regularity with the interglacial periods lasting around 10,000 yrs. (10,000 to 15,000 yrs is the most common range listed). Our current interglacial has lasted for around 10,000 yrs so there is some speculation that we should eventually enter a long-term cooling period signaling the end of the interglacial. Unfortunately natural systems do not follow any regularity and previous interglacials show evidence of fits of cooling and warming so stating unequivocally that we should be cool soon, as if we are following a timetable, is a bit of a reach.

So bottom line, yes glacial conditions will return but no one knows exactly when. Stay tuned!

Wikipedia has a reasonably good post on this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation


Contractor

Boulder climber
CA
Mar 10, 2016 - 03:40pm PT
NASA satalite observations: The rate of sea ice loss in the arctic has outpaced the most pessimistic projections.

The consequent race to claim mineral, oil and gas rights in the arctic, where there was permanent ice 30 years ago, by global producers, while denying the occurrence of global warming is a fuking joke.

Yes, there are scant, random examples of ice growth here and there- and terminally ill, cancer patients have random days of feeling better.

eeyonkee

Trad climber
Golden, CO
Mar 10, 2016 - 03:48pm PT
bluering, say WHAT? What history? While it may be true, even expected, that in a period of climate warming, some areas might actually cool and/or have higher snowfalls. But this takes some sophisticated modeling and could not be predicted out-of-hand based on anecdotal evidence.

I will say this, if we are around as a species long enough, we will likely experience an ice age like the one that buried New York City under a two-mile-thick ice sheet (aka, the last one). That may well be worse than global warming - it's also likely tens of thousands of years in the future. At that time, my house might just be in the exact right place - on dry land but with glacier views. I'm never lucky like that, however.

There are predictions that the very rapid rise in global warming may ultimately cause it's relatively rapid demise - a period of rapid global cooling as a kind of natural karma. That's the only kind of karma that I believe in - scientists know it as Le Chatelier's Principle.
monolith

climber
state of being
Mar 10, 2016 - 03:48pm PT
The prediction was 'in or lifetime'. We know much about the glacial and interglacial periods. We were already in the cooling portion of the Holocene before we started to emit vast amounts of CO2. So much so, we are in a new period, called the Anthropocene.
Mandobob

Trad climber
CO
Mar 10, 2016 - 03:50pm PT
Keep in mind that satellite observation only go back around 30 yrs. So any long-term determinations based on such a short sample period are subject to the "small sample bias".
monolith

climber
state of being
Mar 10, 2016 - 03:57pm PT
And our trusted direct surface temperature measurements go back 150 years. And our reconstructions from ice-core data go back 800k years. Climate scientists are pretty certain our rapid warming is not just some natural process.
eeyonkee

Trad climber
Golden, CO
Mar 10, 2016 - 04:24pm PT
Damn...Look at those glacial tongues in that last photo! They're so prominent as "things".
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Mar 10, 2016 - 04:24pm PT
global cooling. a myth made up by the deniers.
donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Mar 10, 2016 - 04:29pm PT
In Patagonia, at the same distance to the equator, glaciers flow right into the sea..
eeyonkee

Trad climber
Golden, CO
Mar 10, 2016 - 04:30pm PT
Hey, Nature, I am not a denier in any way. I'm a geologist and a sober free-thinker. Everything I just speculated on is likely true. The time frame I was talking about was tens of thousands of years, unless man's tinkerings actually screw up things even worse than we thought and make global cooling a reality in thousands rather than tens of thousands of years.

The short term threat; let's see., us, our children, our grandchildren, their children, their children's children, ...is global warming, no doubt.

An interesting side note is that there is a compelling case that the very rapid changes in climate, e.g., relatively short periods (on the order of thousands - tens of thousands of years) of global warming followed by similarly short periods of global cooling, that is characteristic (almost a definition of, really) of the Pleistocene, is ultimately responsible for our rapid development of large brains. The hypothesis is that only the smart ones survived. Devastating culling events are often responsible for rapid evolutionary jumps.

Of course, if your evolutionary strategy is to use your good looks instead of your survivability, maybe you don't concern yourself so much with climactic issues. Doing deep knee bends regularly and coming up with plausible bullshit about yourself may be a better use of your time - evolutionarily, I mean.
monolith

climber
state of being
Mar 10, 2016 - 04:39pm PT
Donini, in general northern hemisphere is considered warmer then the southern hemislphere for various reasons. But local climate and geographic conditions are the biggest factor so one would have to study the particular region for other factors.

see http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:153364
eeyonkee

Trad climber
Golden, CO
Mar 10, 2016 - 04:59pm PT
The more I look at that obvious glacier in the center of that last photo, the more I want to independently follow it through time. It's is so distinct. You could do useful analysis with free tools.
Mandobob

Trad climber
CO
Mar 10, 2016 - 06:02pm PT
5 million years of cooling

The last five million years of climate change is shown in the next graph based on work by Lisiecki and Raymo in 2005 [2] . It shows our planet has a dynamic temperature history, and over the last three million years, we have had a continuous series of ice ages (now about 90,000 years each) and interglacial warm periods (about 10,000 years each). There are 13 (count ‘em) ice ages on a 100,000 year cycle (from 1.25 million years ago to the present, and 33 ice ages on a 41,000 year cycle (between 2.6 million and 1.25 million years ago). Since Earth is on a multi-million-year cooling trend, we are currently lucky to be living during an interglacial warm period, but we are at the end of our normal 10,000 year warm interglacial period.

OOPS graph won't reproduce. I'll try later

Better yet see:

https://mandobob.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/282/


Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Mar 10, 2016 - 08:55pm PT
@ another nickname. No, it's not a joke. If you've ever been on Rainier you'd have noticed the retreat of the glaciers. If you live in the Northwest you'd be aware of the snowfall in the mountains and, maybe, you'd wonder if the glacial retreat that is so obvious might, just might, not be inevitable. We've had a lot of snow snow this year and I wondered if, despite increasing temperatures, the snowfall at higher elevations might more than compensate for increased melt rates. Clear enough? I like glaciers.

There are some pretty smart people here on Supertopo and they might have some professional and profound opinions.
Jan

Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
Mar 10, 2016 - 09:30pm PT
It's thought that the glacier retreat in the Himalayas is not just a factor of warmer air but also of the amount of particle pollution in the air. Microscopic bits of carbon from diesel burning in particular darken the snow and cause it to melt faster. Likewise, sand being blown from the Gobi desert. Still, that would seem minor in the Rainier region though it might be possible that Mt. St. Helens had some kind of effect?
couchmaster

climber
Mar 10, 2016 - 09:59pm PT
Sure Spiney, here is the best link to start your search: http://bfy.tw/4hEW

Regarding Spineys request, quote:
"That is an interesting claim. So interesting, that I think it requires some documentation. "
Anything else you need, let me know, I'm yer bitch. I actually downplayed it, it wasn't "global cooling" soon to occur, it was actually "RUN FOR THE F*#KING HILLS THE NEXT ICE AGE WILL SOON BE UPON US FOR F*#KS SAKE." Of course, I'm paraphrasing.









Some other decent links to get you started:
Title "Global Cooling is Here Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Next Three Decades"
http://www.newsweek.com/mini-ice-age-bogus-global-cooling-climate-change-354632


Title "GLOBAL COOLING: Decade long ice age predicted as sun 'hibernates'"
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/616937/GLOBAL-COOLING-Decade-long-ice-age-predicted-as-sun-hibernates


Title "Diminishing solar activity may bring new Ice Age by 2030"
http://astronomynow.com/2015/07/17/diminishing-solar-activity-may-bring-new-ice-age-by-2030/

The science is really unsettled, for instance:
Title" "Are we heading into global cooling? What the science says...
https://www.skepticalscience.com/future-global-cooling.htm

Which after examining many scientific claims concludes:
"Summary:
There appear to be very few examples of climate scientists predicting imminent global cooling on this list. Perhaps that's because climate scientists understand that humans are and will continue to be causing rapid global warming for the foreseeable future. The few scientists who are predicting cooling have generally been doing so for several years, and are going against a very large body of scientific evidence that the planet will continue to warm rapidly."

So who can really say? We can all agree that the 10,000 year trend is clear. No Woolly Mammoths, Sloths, or Dire Wolves in the US for example.

Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Mar 10, 2016 - 10:10pm PT
That's pretty damn funny, couch! HaHaHaha!

Jan, I don't think St Helens had but a one year effect and, for all I know,
maybe the ash provided insulation from the sun? Just mentally speculating,
as Werner would say. All I know is 'my route' on St Helens is gone. <sniff> ;-)
couchmaster

climber
Mar 10, 2016 - 10:12pm PT

Haha, thanks Reilly. I hope it doesn't piss Spiney Norman off too much. I was just joking around and teasing, didn't mean to be malicious. Actually, I was surprised to read about the Global Cooling hitting the earth at first, and did a search on the science. Went out and bought a season lift ticket at the ski resort right after, which has been working out pretty nice.

ps, that view on top of St Helens is seriously nad shrinking and seriously contemplative these days.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Mar 11, 2016 - 01:47am PT
Time is relative. Days, months and years for most of us, thousands or millions of years for geologists and billions of years for cosmologists.

We know for sure that climate cycles hot and cold, the questions are more around triggers, tipping points, and [time scale] resolution. Personally I'd say we've been doing a fabulous job on data acquisition and integration and with modeling overall now that we have the storage and cpu cycles to do it.

From my perspective the questions around how disruptive our behavior is and its impact on the current cycle are mostly lifestyle issues for our children and their progeny. But that we are having an impact is undeniable at this point; claiming otherwise is on par with saying humans aren't driving the current extinction event.

It still all circles back to unrestrained population growth, something we as species will eventually pay dearly for and that should be way more frightening to people than climate change or things like nuclear war, meteor strikes and supervolcanoes.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Mar 11, 2016 - 05:58am PT
Reilly, I understand your shock see how Rainier had changed. This photo is from a couple of years ago and shows why I have concerns. This is the south face from Mildred Point looking at the (retreating) Kautz glacier.


Edit: It really IS a pile of rock.
Edit to add: Amazingly, this used to be filled with ice in the not too distant past. The Nisqually glacier used to come down almost to the road, IIRC.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Mar 11, 2016 - 07:27am PT
Geez, that is really shocking. Here's yer humble servant high on the Kautz BITD.
I recall this was July and I was able to ski all the way to the parking lot.


Speaking of glaciers shrinking check out this vid (in Pata, Jim!)
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35779031
monolith

climber
state of being
Mar 11, 2016 - 07:53am PT
Couch discovers there's not much support and quite a bit of hilarity in the 'cooling in our lifetime' claim.

Valentina Zharkova is not even a climate scientist and the media overhyped her paper.

The sun's effect on the climate is well studied by climate scientists. It's change in forcing is tiny compared to CO2 forcing change, mainly because it's output varies very little from it's average.
donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Mar 11, 2016 - 12:28pm PT
Monolith I am well aware of the differences between the two hemispheres. The main reason is Anarctica, which is much, much colder than the Arctic. The South Pole sits at nearly 10,000 ft. while the North Pole is at sea level. Anarctica also has 90% of all of the ice on the planet.

When it comes to Patagonia the very cold Humboldt Current is a major reason the Patagonia Ice Caps can exist at such low latitudes. The opposite is seen with the warming effect of the Gulf Stream on Europe. Great Britain is quite mild yet 95% of it lies further north than the Canadian border.

Another point to ponder...the coldest temperature ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere was -90F. In Siberia. At Vostok, the Russian research base in Eastern Anarctica, the AVERAGE low temperature for the entire month of August is -90F.
nature

climber
Boulder, CO
Mar 11, 2016 - 02:08pm PT
Grug - I wasn't actually referring to your post. We're on the same page.

I am not a denier in any way. I'm a geologist and a sober free-thinker

How come we've never had good campfire talk on this subject? oh, cuz of the sober part. We probably did - I just don't remember ;)

Will there be global cooling - yes. There's been about 22 glacial/interglacial cycles in the Pleistocene. It will continue. Will we see it in our lifetime. Nope. In fact, if we really want to be serious about AGCC we'd give up on trying to fix the problem and starting dealing with how we'll mitigate it. We're f*#ked in the next five years f*#ked.

The global cooling "thinkers" are the ones trying to point out that at the moment the we're not heating up but cooling down. There's zero mainstream science to suggest this and thus i view them as mouth breathing deniers.

My grad teacher (geology) told me I should be able to flip over a bar napkin and draw the climate curve for at least the last 250K and have a discussion on it for hours. Which I can. My graduate work field area was Owens Valley where I looked at late-pleistocene desiccation of Owens lake where I chased the exposed (inter-glacial) dust around and tried to determine how it influence soil development on alluvial fans and in particular glacial moraines. Soils are used as a relative dating tool for the eastern Sierra Nevada glacial sequence (Tahoe, Tenaya, etc.).

One of the things that makes me really laugh is the uneducated trying to point out that climate has always changed and use that as a way of saying what is happening is natural. What they clearly fail to understand is there is not a main-stream scientist working on the issue that disagrees with the fact we've had 1.9 to 2.1 million years of changing climate - glacial/inter-glacial sequences. It's that understanding, the processes and rates associated with it, and the evidence from things mentioned above like the ice cores that are the core of the AGCC science. Or there's the real dumbasses that point out it was hot when dinosaurs existed. Like... no sh#t sherlocks... exothermic life much?
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Mar 12, 2016 - 12:43am PT
Pretty cool that Charlie Porter spent the later part of his career facilitating climate change research by helping folks study the glaciers down that way.
Dr.Sprock

Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
Mar 12, 2016 - 02:19am PT
smaller glaciers on Rainer will mean less flooding in downtown Olympia after the peak blows it's top,

bad news is the price of Rainer Ale just went up due to lack of glacial water used in the brewing process,
kpinwalla2

Social climber
WA
Mar 12, 2016 - 07:21am PT
It's pretty simple really. Glaciers advance when the rate of snow accumulation in the winter exceeds the rate of ablation (melting) in the summer. Can glaciers advance (ratio of snow accumulation vs melting increase) in a warming climate? Perhaps, if the conditions are right. Warmer air and sea surface temperatures promote more evaporation from the sea surface. Warmer air can "hold" more water. If the air temperature rises in the winter but is still below freezing, warmer oceans could provide more moisture to air that can hold more of it, resulting in heavier snowfalls. Places where this might occur would be high latitude coastal mountains with prevailing onshore winds, e.g. SE Alaska. Enhanced cloudiness in the summer due to higher rates of evaporation could also inhibit melting in the summer. However, speaking as a Washingtonian who experienced last summer's record warmth, it seems unlikely that Rainier's glaciers are likely to expand under this scenario. Spring seems to be coming earlier and recent summers have hotter, not cloudier. Some wine grapevines in Washington are already budding out this year - a month earlier than normal.
kpinwalla2

Social climber
WA
Mar 12, 2016 - 07:24am PT
Here's some info on the subject of Rainier's glaciers from Cliff Mass, the NW weather guru.

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2015/09/seattle-times-glacier-disaster.html
Splater

climber
Grey Matter
Mar 12, 2016 - 05:17pm PT
"In fact, if we really want to be serious about AGCC we'd give up on trying to fix the problem and starting dealing with how we'll mitigate it."

I completely disagree.
People will naturally mitigate on their own once they are forced to by the changed environment.
How much mitigation is needed depends on how much we have acted to minimize warming / solar radiative forcing.
There is a HUGE difference between RCP levels.
RCP8.5 is a model of society doing very little to minimize GHGs and the effects are far more disastrous and net costly than RCP4.5

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_Pathways#/media/File:All_forcing_agents_CO2_equivalent_concentration.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_Pathways

http://www.skepticalscience.com/rcp.php?t=3

>> Four Representative concentration pathways (RCPs). Four RCPs…produced from IAM scenarios available in the published literature: one high pathway for which radiative forcing reaches >8.5 W/m2 by 2100 and continues to rise for some amount of time; two intermediate “stabilization pathways” in which radiative forcing is stabilized at approximately 6 W/m2 and 4.5 W/m2 after 2100; and one pathway where radiative forcing peaks at approximately 3 W/m2 before 2100 and then declines. These scenarios include time paths for emissions and concentrations of the full suite of GHGs and aerosols and chemically active gases, as well as land use/land cover…

JLP

Social climber
The internet
Mar 13, 2016 - 10:15pm PT
Winemaker,
You might find this of interest:
glaciers.research.pdx.edu/photos
Interesting, but it seemed like most of the older photos don't have dates, just the year. Huge difference between spring and fall. Almost seemed like propaganda.
tuolumne_tradster

Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
Mar 13, 2016 - 10:45pm PT
August 2009 from the Skyline Trail...

Hardly Visible

Social climber
Llatikcuf WA
Mar 14, 2016 - 09:17am PT
JLP,
You must need glasses. Since we are talking Rainier glaciers here I went and looked at the first page of three of the better known glaciers on Rainier the Nisqually, the Carbon and the Emmons. Counting only pictures older than 10 years, out of 46 pictures of the Nisqually 4 do not have dates, out of 39 pictures of the Carbon only 4 do not have dates (all from 1900), and out of 39 pictures of the Emmons 0 do not have dates. If you look at the site you will see that all photos that were taken for glacier studies (as opposed to those taken by casual observers) will have a date on them.
JLP

Social climber
The internet
Mar 14, 2016 - 10:40am PT
There is a comparison tool on the site presented front and center - the older photos used in that tool do not say the month of the year. Don't really have the interest to dig through the archives. Those photos do seem to have dates, but you're left to compare on your own. As I said, I think this oversight seems to be by design, feel free to demonstrate otherwise.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Mar 14, 2016 - 10:54am PT
I posted this topic because I use this mountain weather site

http://www.mountain-forecast.com/peaks/Mount-Rainier/forecasts/3500

for forecasts; the site makes snowfall and temperature predictions for different altitudes. What drew my attention were some of the high snowfall predictions (20 inches or more some days). I wondered if a warmer climate, carrying more moisture, might deposit enough high altitude snow to feed glaciers faster than the melt rate, leading to growth.

Looks like probably no, however.

S1W

climber
Mar 14, 2016 - 11:57am PT
Interesting reading with some good photo comparisons:

http://www.alpenglow.org/nwmj/07/071_Glaciers.html

neebee

Social climber
calif/texas
Dec 18, 2016 - 02:16am PT
hey there, say... bump... :)

thanks for the link, thank you so much...
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Dec 18, 2016 - 09:15am PT
TT's pic is nearly unrecognizable to me. It is way worse than the last time I was there about
15 years ago, let alone back in my hay days. Couple of my old ski routes are bare rock.
BITD they would not have been fun in August, but they would have been doable.
Messages 1 - 49 of total 49 in this topic
Return to Forum List
 
Our Guidebooks
spacerCheck 'em out!
SuperTopo Guidebooks

guidebook icon
Try a free sample topo!

 
SuperTopo on the Web

Recent Route Beta