Alaska’s Melting Mountain Glaciers Have Big Impact on Sea-Level Rise, Study Says
Yereth Rosen
Alaska Dispatch News
June 18, 2015
A hanging glacier above the Ruth glacier in Denali National Park on July 19, 2012.
Loren Holmes photo
The chunks of blue-tinted ice that splash into the sea from Alaska’s calving tidewater glaciers make for dramatic images, but far more meltwater is flowing into the ocean from Alaska’s mountain and inland glaciers, a new study has found.
In all, Alaska’s melting glaciers are losing 75 billion tons of ice a year. That’s enough, if melted, to cover the entire state with a foot of water every seven years, or to fill 30 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, according to the study, by scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington.
Most of that loss, about 94 percent, comes from glaciers located on land or by lakes, where melt is occurring at the surface where sunlight and atmospheric heat beats down, said the study, published online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
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