Melting Glaciers

Study sees Glacier National Park losing its glaciers by 2070
MSNBC Staff and Wire Reports

Boston, May 27, 1998 —The more than 50 glaciers in Glacier National Park in Montana will be gone in the next 50 to 70 years, according to researchers. Those glaciers and others around the world are melting faster than scientists had previously thought, the researchers added. “The Glaciers are receding and they’re becoming thinner, and you can see this,” geologist Mark Meier told peers Tuesday at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Meier placed the blame squarely on global warming. While the scientific consensus is that Earth is getting warmer, there’s more debate about whether humans are contributing to that via greenhouse gases or whether the trend is simply part of a natural cycle.

Other Signs Around Earth

Meier and his research team at the University of Colorado at Boulder looked at characteristics of glaciers worldwide during the last 100 years, then compared the measurements to today’s ice caps. Apart from Glacier National Park, they found that other mid-latitude glaciers had receded and become thinner over the last century:

1. In Africa, Mount Kenya’s largest glacier has lost 92 percent of its mass.
2. In Russia, the glaciers in the Caucasus Mountains have shrunk by half.
3. Along the China-Russian border, the Tien Shan Mountain range has lost 22 percent of its ice over the last 40 years.