Glaciers in Europe
From ClimateWiki
From Climate Change Reconsidered, a work of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change
Model studies indicate that CO2-induced global warming will result in significant melting of earth’s glaciers, contributing to a rise in global sea level. Global data on glaciers do not support claims made by the IPCC that most claciers are retreating or melting.
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European Glaciers
Joerin et al. (2006) examined glacier recessions in the Swiss Alps over the past ten thousand years based on radiocarbon-derived ages of materials found in proglacial fluvial sediments of subglacial origin, focusing on subfossil remains of wood and peat. Combining their results with earlier data of a similar nature, they then constructed a master chronology of Swiss glacier fluctuations over the course of the Holocene.
Joerin et al. first report discovering that “alpine glacier recessions occurred at least 12 times during the Holocene,” once again demonstrating that millennial-scale oscillation of climate has reverberated throughout glacial and interglacial periods as far back in time as scientists have searched for the phenomenon. Second, they determined that glacier recessions have been decreasing in frequency since approximately 7,000 years ago, and especially since 3,200 years ago, “culminating in the maximum glacier extent of the ‘Little Ice Age’.” Third, the last of the major glacier recessions in the Swiss Alps occurred between about 1,400 and 1,200 years ago, according to Joerin et al.’s data, but between 1200 and 800 years ago, according to the data of Holzhauser et al. (2005) for the Great Aletsch Glacier. Of this discrepancy, Joerin et al. say that given the uncertainty of the radiocarbon dates, the two records need not be considered inconsistent with each other. What is more, their presentation of the Great Aletsch Glacier data indicates the glacier’s length at about AD 1000—when there was fully 100 ppm less CO2 in the air than there is today—was just slightly less than its length in 2002.
Also in the Swiss Alps, Huss et al. (2008) examined various ice and meteorological measurements made between 1865 and 2006 in an effort to compute the yearly mass balances of four glaciers.
The most obvious conclusion to be drawn from these data is the fact that each of the four glaciers has decreased in size. But more important is the fact that the rate of shrinkage has not accelerated over time, as evidenced by the long-term trend lines we have fit to the data. There is no compelling evidence that this 14-decade-long glacial decline has had anything to do with the air’s CO2 content.
Consider, for example, the changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration experienced over the same time period, also shown in the figure. If we compute the mean rate-of-rise of the air’s CO2 content from the start of the record to about 1950, and from about 1970 to 2006, we see that between 1950 and 1970 the rate-of-rise of the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration increased by more than five-fold, yet there were no related increases in the long-term mass balance trends of the four glaciers. It is clear that the ice loss history of the glaciers was not unduly influenced by the increase in the rate-of-rise of the air’s CO2 content that occurred between 1950 and 1970, and that their rate of shrinkage was also not materially altered by what the IPCC calls the unprecedented warming of the past few decades.
Moving to northern Europe, Linderholm et al. (2007) examined “the world’s longest ongoing continuous mass-balance record” of “Storglaciaren in northernmost Sweden,” which they report “is generally well correlated to glaciers included in the regional mass balance program (Holmlund and Jansson, 1999), suggesting that it represents northern Swedish glaciers.” The results of their work are depicted in Figure 4.1.5.2, where we have also plotted the contemporaneous history of the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration.
In viewing the figure, it should be evident that the historical increase in the air’s CO2 content has had absolutely no discernable impact on the net mass balance history of Sweden’s Storglaciaren over the past two-and-a-quarter centuries. Whereas the mean rate-of-rise of the air’s CO2 concentration over the last half-century of Storglaciaren mass balance data is fully 15 times greater than what it was over the first half-century of mass balance data (and some 40 times greater if the first and last quarter-centuries are considered), there has been no sign of any change in the long-term trend of Storglaciaren’s net mass balance.
D’Orefice et al. (2000) assembled and analyzed a wealth of historical data to derive a history of post-Little Ice Age (LIA) shrinkage of the surface area of the southernmost glacier of Europe, Ghiacciaio del Calderone. From the first available information on the glacier’s surface area in 1794, there was a very slow ice wastage that lasted until 1884, whereupon the glacier began to experience a more rapid area reduction that continued, with some irregularities, to 1990, resulting in a loss of just over half the glacier’s LIA surface area.
Not all European glaciers, however, have experienced continuous declines since the end of the Little Ice Age. Hormes et al. (2001) report that glaciers in the Central Swiss Alps experienced two periods of readvancement, one around 1920 and another as recent as 1980. In addition, Braithwaite (2002) reports that for the period 1980-1995, “Scandinavian glaciers [have been] growing, and glaciers in the Caucasus are close to equilibrium,” while “there is no obvious common or global trend of increasing glacier melt.”
Fifty years of mass balance data from the storied Storglaciaren of northwestern Sweden also demonstrate a trend reversal in the late twentieth century. According to Braithwaite and Zhang (2000), there has been a significant upward trend in the mass balance of this glacier over the past 30-40 years, and it has been in a state of mass accumulation for at least the past decade.
Additional evidence for post-LIA glacial expansion is provided by the history of the Solheimajokull outlet glacier on the southern coast of Iceland. In a review of its length over the past 300 years, Mackintosh et al. (2002) report a post-LIA minimum of 13.8 km in 1970, whereupon the glacier began to expand, growing to a length of about 14.3 km by 1995. The minimum length of 13.8 km observed in 1970 also did not eclipse an earlier minimum in which the glacier had decreased from a 300-year maximum length of 15.2 km in 1740 to a 300-year minimum of 13.2 km in 1783.
More recent glacial advances have been reported in Norway. According to Chin et al. (2005), glacial recession in Norway was most strongly expressed in “the middle of the 20th century,” ending during the late 1950s to early 1960s.” Then, “after some years with more or less stationary glacier front positions, [the glaciers] began to advance, accelerating in the late 1980s.” Around 2000, a portion of the glaciers began to slow, while some even ceased moving; but they say that “most of the larger outlets with longer reaction times are continuing to advance.” Chin et al. report that “the distances regained and the duration of this recent advance episode are both far greater than any previous readvance since the Little Ice Age maximum, making the recent resurgence a significant event.” Mass balance data reveal much the same thing, “especially since 1988” and “at all [western] maritime glaciers in both southern and northern Norway,” where “frequent above-average winter balances are a main cause of the positive net balances at the maritime glaciers during the last few decades.”
In considering the results of the studies summarized above, it appears there is no correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and glacier melting or advancement in Europe. Several European glaciers are holding their own or actually advancing over the past quarter-century, a period of time in which the IPCC claims the earth has warmed to its highest temperature of the past thousand years.
References
Braithwaite, R.J. 2002. Glacier mass balance: the first 50 years of international monitoring. Progress in Physical Geography 26: 76-95.
Braithwaite, R.J. and Zhang, Y. 2000. Relationships between interannual variability of glacier mass balance and climate. Journal of Glaciology 45: 456-462.
Chinn, T., Winkler, S., Salinger, M.J. and Haakensen, N. 2005. Recent glacier advances in Norway and New Zealand: A comparison of their glaciological and meteorological causes. Geografiska Annaler 87 A: 141-157.
Climate Change Reconsidered: Website of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. http://www.nipccreport.org/archive/archive.html
D’Orefice, M., Pecci, M., Smiraglia, C. and Ventura, R. 2000. Retreat of Mediterranean glaciers since the Little Ice Age: Case study of Ghiacciaio del Calderone, central Apennines, Italy. Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research 32: 197-201.
Holmlund, P. and Jansson, P. 1999. The Tarfala mass balance programme. Geografiska Annaler 81A: 621-631.
Holzhauser, H., Magny, M. and Zumbuhl, H.J. 2005. Glacier and lake-level variations in west-central Europe over the last 3500 years. The Holocene 15: 789-801.
Hormes, A., Müller, B.U. and Schlüchter, C. 2001. The Alps with little ice: evidence for eight Holocene phases of reduced glacier extent in the Central Swiss Alps. The Holocene 11: 255-265.
Huss, M., Bauder, A., Funk, M. and Hock, R. 2008. Determination of the seasonal mass balance of four Alpine glaciers since 1865. Journal of Geophysical Research 113: 10.1029/2007JF000803.
Joerin, U.E., Stocker, T.F. and Schlüchter, C. 2006. Multicentury glacier fluctuations in the Swiss Alps during the Holocene. The Holocene 16: 697-704.
Linderholm, H.W., Jansson, P. and Chen, D. 2007. A high-resolution reconstruction of Storglaciaren mass balance back to 1780/81 using tree-ring and circulation indices. Quaternary Research 67: 12-20.
Mackintosh, A.N., Dugmore, A.J. and Hubbard, A.L. 2002. Holocene climatic changes in Iceland: evidence from modeling glacier length fluctuations at Solheimajokull. Quaternary International 91: 39-52.
Petit, J.R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barkov, N.I., Barnola, J.-M., Basile, I., Bender, M., Chappellaz, J., Davis, M., Delaygue, G., Delmotte, M., Kotlyakov, V.M., Legrand, M., Lipenkov, V.Y., Lorius, C., Pepin, L., Ritz, C., Saltzman, E. and Stievenard, M. 1999. Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica. Nature 399: 429-436.
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