Near the end point of the Bologna Glacier in August 2021. Natural Resources Canada
Researchers studying Canadian glaciers say they often feel awe when standing on top of the country’s iconic frozen formations, but the experience is particularly striking when accompanied by a complete lack of sound.
“It can be extremely quiet,” said Gwen Flowers, a geophysicist at Simon Fraser University who specializes in glacier dynamics. “When I come from the city, I find that for the first few days my ears are buzzing with the lack of background noise. It’s as if your body needs to recalibrate to silence. ”
This week, Dr. Flowers undertook an in-depth inspection of the glaciers of his field sites in the Clowan National Park in the Yukon. The trip is the key event of her research year – an opportunity to record a chronicle of the delayed pulsations of the mountain ice. The exercise is similar to watching an action movie by studying one frame at a time.
Across the country, glaciologists have been similarly heading north or west since mid-April to gather data and reconnect with places that are the focus of their lives. This is an annual ritual that begins when winter recedes and the light part of the day lengthens.
Increasingly, it is time for scientists to quantify the loss from the previous year, before the summer heat, exacerbated by climate change, takes another bite out of what remains. In some cases, this means observing the disintegration of elements that have been an integral part of the country’s landscape for tens of thousands of years.
This is a dramatic change that is sending waves around the world – literally. Canada manages about a third of the world’s glaciers outside of Greenland and Antarctica. As the century progresses, the more these glaciers retreat, the more they contribute to sea level rise.
COLD CALLS
Scientists visit several glaciers
sites across Canada this spring
Arctic sites (Natural Resources Canada)
Northwest Resources (Natural Resources Canada)
Cluane National Park and Reserve
(Simon Fraser University)
Mount Logan (University of Alberta)
The blue zones show glaciers
MURAT YUKSELIR / GLOSS AND POST, SOURCE:
NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA
COLD CALLS
Scientists visit several glaciers
sites across Canada this spring
Arctic sites (Natural Resources Canada)
Northwest Resources (Natural Resources Canada)
Clowan National Park and Reserve (Simon Fraser University)
Mount Logan (University of Alberta)
The blue zones show glaciers
MURAT YUKSELIR / GLOSS AND POST, SOURCE:
NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA
COLD CALLS
This spring, scientists are visiting glaciers in several places in Canada
Arctic sites (Natural Resources Canada)
Clowan National Park and Reserve (Simon Fraser University)
Mount Logan (University of Alberta)
Northwest Resources (Natural Resources Canada)
The blue zones show glaciers
MURAT YUXELIR / GLOSS AND POST, SOURCE: NATURAL RESOURCES CANADA
Closer to home, ice is an important reserve, the loss of which also has important regional and local consequences for water resources and wildlife. This even affects air quality, as the bare land, which was previously covered with glaciers, becomes a source of air dust for windy communities, Dr. Flowers added.
The need for continuous measurement and monitoring of ice is becoming increasingly urgent as the pace of climate change accelerates. One of the reasons for the annual data collection is the re-calibration of computer-generated forecasts that can tell scientists what’s next.
In 2020, the pandemic created a gap in Canada’s ice records when it prevented teams from traveling to their remote sites. Data collection was resumed in 2021, but the magnitude of the changes that have taken place in the meantime has been profound. In some cases, aluminum measuring rods used to measure the rate of ice loss melted completely from the glaciers and overturned when the ice receded or lost too much thickness.
This year, The Globe and Mail spoke with four glaciologists, including Dr. Flowers, before they left for this year’s field season. They discussed their plans and their desire to return to the harsh conditions that form the background of their scientific work.
Gwen Flowers uses ice-penetrating radar research to measure the depth of ice on an unnamed glacier in July 2021. SFU
“Some people would find it hostile and cold,” said Dr. Flowers, who is also president of the International Glaciological Society. “But if you see a raven flying over your camp or a bunch of flowers on a moraine, it’s very special. I think the harshness and free nature of the landscape make you appreciate every detail of it. ”
Wonderful balance
The largest glaciers in Canada are massive ice sheets located on top of the northern islands of the Arctic archipelago. Among the highest is the Devon ice cap, whose peak is 1800 meters above sea level, about 750 meters of which is hard ice.
This spring, David Burgess, a glaciologist at Natural Resources Canada, led a team in Devon and four other high-Arctic sites to make reference measurements and record annual changes in the total amount of ice trapped in glaciers.
The data is provided to the World Glacier Observatory, based in Switzerland, and is used to study the impact of climate change on the cryosphere, a collective term used by scientists for a part of the planet that is constantly frozen.
That influence is no longer subtle, Dr. Burgess said. The key parameter he and his colleagues measure is mass balance. This is the difference between the amount of material that the glacier loses each summer compared to the amount that accumulates as snowfall during the rest of the year.
To do this, he and his team are transported to their various training sites on Twin Otter planes that land on skis. After that, they will usually camp on the glacier and, traveling by snowmobile, visit a series of five-meter poles built into the ice to record differences in altitude from the previous year and collect data from meteorological stations erected along the way.
On the left, Natural Resources Canada scientists Dr. David Burgess, Dr. Bradley Danielson and PhD student Daniel Halle conduct research on the glacier of Meyhen in April 2022. Natural Resources Canada
The trend clearly shows that glaciers are losing more mass than they are gaining. Another indication for change is the “fern”, the upper layer of the glacier, which consists of old snow from previous years. The fern has a solid consistency like styrofoam and with age is gradually compressed by successive layers of snowfall each winter, while most of the air is squeezed out and turned into glacial ice.
But scientists are increasingly seeing layers of hard ice embedded in ferns. They are caused when melting creates pools of water at the top of the glacier, which then freeze again and become covered. Ice layers can accelerate weight loss by preventing water from seeping further into the body of the glacier.
Early indications of change began to appear in the 1990s and then became more common in the 2000s. Together with the mass balance data, they point to a rapid transformation in all the Arctic sites that scientists are observing. Nothing like this has been seen since Canada first began measuring its glaciers about 60 years ago. And there is no sign of anything like that in the ice sheets accumulated in all the centuries before.
“There’s a really strong signal of climate change that’s happening in the Arctic, and it’s not just anecdotal,” said Dr. Burgess. “It’s interesting to see exactly how much can be measured.”
Peak flow
For Mark Ednie, nothing compares to the eternal feeling he gets of standing on top of the Bologna Glacier deep in the harsh desert that separates the Northwest Territories from the Yukon. The area is so off the beaten track that it’s rare to even see traces of a jet passing from above.
“It’s easy to imagine that you’re the first person to ever be there,” he said.
Alison Cristitiello and geologist Rebecca Haspel climbed the Logan Mountains in June 2021. During this initial expedition, the team collected data, installed the highest meteorological station in North America and completed a radar survey to find the perfect excavation site. ice for the project. Zack Robinson A high-altitude meteorological station is completely shrouded in an ice matrix of snow and ice called “Rome” in the ice cap of Agassis, Elsmere Island, NU, in April 2021. Daniel Halle Colin Arianio measures the seasonal accumulation of snow snow pit in the ice fields in May 2016. Distribution
Like his colleagues in the High Arctic, Dr. Ednie is a glaciologist in the federal government and his work involves tracking changes in the same set of glaciers over time. The difference is that all its field sites are high in the western mountains, from the barely known Bologna Glacier in the north to the Columbia and Peito Glaciers in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, which are major tourist attractions. He is also tracking two other sites in the British Columbia coastline.
And in all five places his goal is the same: to get an in-depth idea of exactly what changes are happening in physical characteristics …
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