There are over 3,000 glaciers in Canada's Rocky and Columbia Mountains of Alberta and British Columbia, covering an area of 4,298 km², with an average glacier size of 1.3 km². This means that the majority of glaciers in the interior ranges of western Canada are small and vulnerable to ongoing retreat from climate change due to population explosion and the continued burning of fossil fuels to drive the world's economies.
One of the most famous is the Athabasca Glacier pictured here. The Athabasca is one of the six principle 'toes' of the Columbia Icefield. The glacier is retreating at a rate of about 5 meters (16 feet) per year and has receded more than 1.4 km (1 mile) and lost over half its volume in the past 125 years.
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The glacier moves down from the icefield at a rate of several centimeters per day. Due to its close proximity to the Icefields Parkway in Jasper National Park, between the towns of Banff and Jasper, and rather easy accessibility, Athabasca is the most visited glacier in North America.
The view from the Icefield Interpretive Centre, closed during the winter
(mid-October to mid-April)
The Interpretive Center stands across from the glacier. As recently as the 1980s the glacier reached to the stairs you see in this image. It has retreated significantly in recent decades. I didn't see anything all that interpretive in the center. A gift shop, bathrooms, a restaurant, and upstairs, a lodge. For $150 Canadian one could board a special bus to be driven to the foot of the glacier. I decided to hike, instead.
There were many cairns near the glacier. These piles of rocks are traditionally used to mark trails but in this case I think they were more used for photo ops as there was no visible trail associated with the cairns.
The glacier is approximately 6 km (3.7 miles) long, covers an area of 6km² (2.3 sq. miles), and is between 90 and 300 meters (300-900 feet) thick.
All along the Columbia Icefield there are dazzling mountains in every direction. It is a outdoorsman's dream and the photography is stunning, if you can decide which way to point your camera. On every high ridge there is another glacier leaning toward meltwater lakes below. This is truly the most spectacular mountain range within reasonable reach that I have ever experienced.
Bow Lake, colored by granite ground fine like flour and suspended in the water due to the movement and melting of Bow Glacier (left of image). Spectacular.
For more information check out Parks Canada's Jasper National Park Page dedicated to
Alberta is massive at 250,000 square miles (660,000 square kilometers) and with only around 4 million people. It is, regardless, the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces. One can drive for miles and encounter no other human beings. In the little mountain towns of Banff, Canmore, Drumheller, Jasper, Lake Louise, and Sylvan Lake there are tourists, but nothing like what we experience on any typical day in Florida (with 20 million residents and countless millions of tourists year-round).
A Porcupine Loses its Tongue
Porcupine Glacier loses a massive chunk of ice
Porcupine Glacier August 25, 2015
Porcupine Glacier August 27, 2016
In late August 2016, a deep rift widened and an iceberg heaved away from the Porcupine Glacier in northern British Columbia. Glaciologist Mauri Pelto, who has been analyzing satellite imagery of glaciers since the 1980s, called it “the biggest calving event in North America” that he has ever seen.
Glaciers constantly change due to natural freezing and thawing processes, and they often calve small icebergs. The breakup at Porcupine is the largest single iceberg (by area) to calve from a North American glacier in recent decades, said Pelto, a professor of environmental science at Nichols College. Columbia Glacier in Alaska accounts for more calved ice by volume.
“It’s quite unusual,” he said. “I haven’t found any one bigger [than Porcupine], though the Yakutat Glacier in Alaska had some pretty big calving events in 2009, 2010.”
The Landsat 8 satellite passed over Porcupine Glacier on August 27, 2016, and observed the large, new iceberg (top). The second image shows the glacier as it appeared to Landsat 8 on August 27, 2015. The false-color images show the landscape in shortwave infrared bands at 30-meter resolution, a view that provides better distinction between ice, snow, and water.
As glacial ice thins, it melts from above and below, becoming more susceptible to rifts; eventually icebergs break off along those cracks. In the case of Porcupine, the iceberg broke off from a floating “ice tongue.” Such ice formations float on a small amount of water, lacking the structural support of a grounded terminus tongue, which is held up by the earth and rock on the seafloor or riverbed beneath it.
The iceberg from Porcupine comes from an ice tongue measuring 0.74 square miles (1.2 square kilometers). Tongues of this size typically occur in massive iced-over areas like the Larsen Ice Shelf, but are rare in relatively small Alaskan glaciers.
Unlike smaller chunks that fall into the water, this iceberg likely didn’t make much of a splash when it parted from the glacier, Pelto said. “It would have been more like if you’re pushing off from the shore in a canoe. It didn’t break off and fall in.”
References and Related Reading
AGU Blogosphere—From a Glacier’s Perspective (2016 September 22) Porcupine Glacier, BC 1.2km2 Calving Event Marks Rapid Retreat. Accessed October 8, 2016.
NASA Earth Observatory (2002) Ice Loss in Glacier National Park.
Hurricane Matthew
Power Outages
After grazing Florida and Georgia, Hurricane Matthew plowed into South Carolina southeast of McClellanville as a category 1 storm. Strong winds, falling trees, and storm surge flooding knocked out power in coastal areas of all three states.
From space, the outages were clearly visible. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured these three nighttime images of the Atlantic coast. The image on the left was acquired at 3:14 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (07:14 Universal Time) on October 6, 2016; the middle image shows the same area at 3:14 a.m. on October 7; the image on the right was acquired at 2:14 a.m. on October 8.
Notice how many cities and towns on the eastern coast of Florida lost power on October 7. By the next day, power had been restored in some areas.
As of 1:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on October 8, 2016, Florida Power and Light Company reported that 400,000 customers were without power. In Georgia, 272,000 Georgia Power customers were in the dark. South Carolina Gas and Electric had 268,000 customers without power; Duke Energy had an additional 70,000 customers in the dark in South Carolina and 84,000 in North Carolina. The map above is based on data from the power companies. In particular, Flagler County, Florida, and Calhoun County, South Carolina suffered many outages.
We've Read:
Eduardo and Julian by Joan Crisol
What are they selling?
One guess. . .
You give up? Upscale underwear.