A 700-year-old Glacier Has Melted Due to Climate Change

Blue glaciers are a trademark of Iceland, a Northern country, 11% of whose territory is covered with ice. But glaciers have started to disappear, and there’s a possibility that soon, they’ll vanish altogether.

Okjokull glacier was formed about 700 years ago. In 1901, it stretched for 15 square miles and had a depth of 165 feet. It now takes up less than half a square mile and is only 50 feet deep. It took a century for the huge glacier to turn into a small piece of ice; and in 2014, the glacier stopped moving and was officially considered extinct. And a similar occurrence has happened all around the world.

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TIMESTAMPS:
How a huge glacier turned into a small piece of ice 0:17
What’s happening to the Alaskan glaciers 2:06
How is it possible to lose 11 billion tons of ice in just one day?! 4:10
Why the highest ski resort in the world was closed down 5:42
What NASA says 7:37

#glaciers #Alaska #brightside

Preview photo credit:
Okjökull Remembered: By Joshua Stevens/NASA Earth Observatory, https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145439/okjokull-remembered
Animation is created by Bright Side.

SUMMARY:
– Okjokull lost its prefix “jokul” which means “glacier” in Icelandic, and they started calling it Ok, after the volcano on which it sits.
– A geologist from Iceland, Oddur Sigurdsson, predicted the quick disappearance of glaciers as far back as 10 years ago. 56 of 330 small glaciers have disappeared in the Northern part of Iceland already, but Okjokull was the biggest of them all.
– A similar occurrence has happened all around the world. Glaciers now cover about 10% of the Earth’s surface, but are quickly melting because the average temperature on Earth has been steadily rising.
– Pedersen Glacier, located in Kenai Fjords National Park, receded throughout the 20th century, exposing Pedersen Spit and Pedersen Lagoon. There are almost no traces of the glacier left now.
– Carroll glacier used to be 15 miles long, but little of it is left now. A calm lake, touching the base of a small hill, is in its place. The snow that used to lie on top of the hills and lakeshores also melted, and now everything is green.
– The territory, which is mostly green now, used to be covered with a thick layer of ice and snow a hundred years ago. Muir Glacier can hardly be recognized now after the glacier sunk back about 12.5 miles.
– The vast icy expanses of Muir glacier have turned into a huge lake. There used to be no plants here because of the low temperatures, but after the glacier melted, the valley bloomed and filled with ocean water, creating Muir Inlet.
– Toboggan Glacier used to cover a large territory, but less than a hundred years later, it’d thinned by 492 ft. It was a dull gray landscape before, but by the year 2000, brushwood had covered the slopes of the hills.
– Greenland is #2 on the list of places that are losing their glaciers quickly.
– In just one day, July 31, 2019, Greenland lost 11 billion tons of ice; and 197 billion tons in the whole month of July. This is 3 times higher than ecologists had predicted.
– #3 in the list of the fastest melting regions is the Southern Andes, which lost 1.2 trillion tons of glacier ice over half a century.
– Qori Kalis Glacier, in Peru, one of the few tropical glaciers, has been melting for 33 years, and continues to melt at an alarming rate.
– In 2009, Bolivia had to close down the Chacaltaya ski resort. It was situated at a height of between 15,400 and 17,700 feet, and was the highest ski resort in the world.
– In 2005 a snowcap on top of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania melted for the first time in 11,000 years. The height of the mountain is 19,350 feet, and it’s never been that warm there.
– 9 years ago, NASA started mission IceBridge to observe the polar ice in the Arctic and Antarctic.
– This year, they reported that the polar ice sheets are smaller than ever, and the speed of the melting is faster than scientists predicted.

Music by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/

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