Scientists Scramble To Improve Baseline Data At Glacier NP; Staff Prepare Visitors For Ice-Free Park

[hatrack]

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“The national parks in general, and Glacier Park in particular, have become the poster child for climate change, and that means they really are stepping up as leaders in both research and education.” So said Leigh Welling, newly named climate change coordinator for the National Park Service. Before taking that post, she headed the scientific research and education center here in Glacier, and before that she was a paleo-oceanographer whose job it was to reconstruct past environments. That's what many others have been doing in Glacier Park for decades now. Scientists from dozens of different disciplines have come to measure the ice, and the moisture, and the tree rings and soil and water, and the plants and animals and skies themselves. They look back millennia, far into the atmospheric past, and there they read stories from deep time.

And here's the thing - all those scientists, from all those fields, with all those different approaches, they all now find their results converging into one uniform narrative. Summertime temperatures are up several degrees. The ice is nearly gone, and going faster than expected. The hottest years are the most recent years. It is a consistent story of a changing climate driven to extremes, and at extreme speeds, pushed in part by the choices people have made and continue to make. “What's clear,” Welling said, “is we're going to have to make new choices. This is huge and rapid change, far faster than we can account for through natural cycles, and it leaves the mountain ecosystem very vulnerable.”

The climate warms and seasons shift. Migration schedules become out of whack. Powerful storms sweep through, unleashing avalanches and landslides and floods. Green-up comes earlier, cool-down later, wildfire season lasts longer, and waters warm then trickle out.

In Glacier National Park - which perches astride the intersection of four climatic transition zones - some species will win, and some will lose. “We're just beginning to see the tangible manifestations,” Welling said, “and it's prompting the park to step up and lead by example.” Which explains Kloeck's daily talks, seven times a day, up there on Logan Pass. “It's called ‘Goodbye to Glaciers,' ” said Sherry Forbes, the park's chief of interpretation and education. “And it's part of a much broader effort.”

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http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/08/18/news/top/news01.txt

[XemaSab]

1. .

[izquierdista]

2. In 50 years

There will still be climate change deniers, this time saying that "Glacier National Park never really had glaciers in it. That was a reference to the Ice Age, when glaciers came as far south as Illinois and Indiana. No, the earth's climate cycles from cold to hot and we are just in a normal warm spot in the trend."

By that time, I will be too old and feeble to pick up anything heavy to throw at them.

[grasswire]

3. I'm thinking about those glorious alpine wildflowers...

...and the mountain sheep, and so much beauty. Gone? How did we dare to allow this to happen?

I recall going out on the Athabasca Glacier in Canada in a snow cat in the 70s. It was amazing. We never had a thought it would all end.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Are they considering what Glacier National Park's

new name will be?

Reagan/Bush National Park?