Melting

The glaciers are melting.

Once, there were 29. Now at least one is gone, maybe three. Those that remain are almost half the size they used to be.

Mount Rainier is losing its glaciers. That is all the more striking as it is the most glacier-covered mountain in the contiguous United States.

It doesn’t look as if it’s losing its glaciers from down here in Seattle. It still looks like a giant ice cream cone. But appearances can deceive.

Mountain glaciers are vanishing as the burning of fossil fuels heats up Earth’s atmosphere. According to the World Glacier Monitoring Service, total glacier area has shrunk steadily in the last half-century; some of the steepest declines have been in the Western United States and Canada.

In a stable climate, glaciers dance to the rhythm of the seasons. They grow every winter with snow and ice. They melt every summer, supplying chilled water to the creeks and rivers downstream, and the plants and animals that rely on them, in the dry season.

Climate change has upset that balance. Spring snowpack has declined since the mid 20th century. Temperatures have gone up. Even when the winter snow is good, an unusually warm spring melts the snow quickly, as it did this year.

So long Tahoma.

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