CBS crew followed Dr Mauri Pelto, Director of the North Cascades Glacier Climate Project, on his annual trek in the Cascades Glaciers.
Dr Pelto first invited me to join in 2011, when I couldn’t make it happen, but in 2012, I was able to crowd fund the resources for my first ever field work on Big Ice.
The video above gives a hint, but only a hint.
There’s a place on the approach to Mt Baker where you turn a corner and suddenly it’s as if you’ve stepped into another world.
As for Pelto, the guy is a mountain goat at age 63. These data gathering trips are massive physical challenges, and one can only be in awe of his stamina.
The video also touches on daughter Jill Pelto, who has made a name for herself revealing data in both graph tables and water colors.
Below, one part of my conversations in 2012, at Easton Glacier. It gives you the barest idea of how massive the ice loss has been in the last 100 years.
One striking change in the intervening years has been the clear mountain air giving way to toxic wildfire smoke.
Columbia University:
We know that ash from forest fires can deposit onto glaciers, affecting their albedo, or reflectance. This darker color means they absorb more sunlight and melt faster. At the same time, however, smoke from the fires could darken skies and potentially decrease melting. What is the effect, if any, of the ash on the glaciers?
The reality is, the 2020 forest fires in Washington State will have not have a significant immediate impact on albedo changes. This lack of impact is a result of the fires starting so late in the melt season. If the ash falls in September, the melt season is almost over and much of the ash will be covered by new snow in a manner of weeks. In addition, the glacier surfaces are already quite dirty.
On the steeper blue ice areas of North Cascade glaciers, most of the ash is washed away by ensuing rainfall as the first fall and winter storms arrive, though it can deposit more thickly in some spots and remain into the next year. Where the ash does persist, it has a direct impact due to albedo changes. Next year, when the surfaces that accumulated ash are exposed after this winter’s snows have melted, there will be enhanced melt of ice due to the decreased albedo.
The more important aspect in western North America in many recent years is that significant forest fires occur as a result of prolonged warm dry periods that also lead to high glacier melt rates. This year the hottest conditions came late in the melt season when glacier albedo is already low [darker surface conditions], which further increases melt rates.
Do these points apply equally to all the glaciers in the region, or are there some differences between the mountains?
The proximity to a fire is crucial. For ash to fall in significant quantities on a glacier, typically the fire has to be within several hundred kilometers and the ash has to be at the surface for a significant part of the melt season. The North Cascade glaciers in Washington were not near most of the large 2020 fires. Mount Shasta in far northern California or Mount Hood in Oregon were closer to the fires this summer and would have experienced a greater impact.
The proximity of a glacier to a fire strongly influences the impact of ash deposited on snow surfaces in the following year, after the winter’s snow has melted and the ash-covered surfaces are exposed once again. Susan Kaspari, a geologist at Central Washington University, has noted this effect on Blue Glacier in Washington’s Olympic Range after a nearby fire in 2011.
In British Columbia in 2018, many glaciers in the province were close to the large fires. Black carbon deposition was significant and remains at the surface of many of the glaciers where snowpack from the preceding winter is lost. This certainly was visible last month to a team from the University of Northern British Columbia, led by Ben Pelto, a graduate student in glaciology (and my son).
Sadly, now, I don’t have to travel 2000 miles to see wildfire smoke, as it has now become a new normal in the upper Great Lakes.
