Dire warnings are renewed about melting Canadian glaciers

Scientists are issuing renewed–and dire–warnings about the fate of Canadian mountain glaciers.

They say the glaciers are receding at a dramatic rate–the result of less snow and rapid melt.

“Probably 80 per cent of the mountain glaciers in Alberta and B.C. will disappear in the next 50 years,” David Hik, an ecology professor at Simon Fraser University” said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Melting glaciers have wide-ranging consequences, including an increase of sea level, which can set off coastal erosion and flooding that result in dry areas and dust bowls and can drastically effect coastal cities.

Glaciers are formed when snow accumulates in the winter but doesn’t melt completely the following summer and Canada.

Canada has an estimated 200,000 square kilometres of glaciers–more glacier cover than any other nation, excepting the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.

Hik says the Canadian West is one of the hot spots for warming, causing glaciers in Alberta, B.C. and Yukon to retreat faster than any time in history.

“The Peyto Glacier in the Rocky Mountains, part of Banff National Park, has lost about 70 per cent of its mass, in the last 50 years,” Hik told CP.

“It’s a small glacier but it’s typical of what we’re seeing.”

Zac Robinson, a professor at the University of Alberta, says as the climate warms, the fragmentation of large ice caps in the Rockies will continue.

Robinson says the St. Elias Mountains in Yukon are losing ice at the fastest rate.

“Yukon glaciers in the St. Elias ranges have lost approximately one-quarter of ice cover since the 1950s,” he says.

Hik and Robinson are co-authors of the first State of the Mountains report, which was published in May by the Alpine Club of Canada.

Of Canada’s estimated 200,000 square kilometres of glaciers, a quarter are found in the west and the remainder are in the Canadian Arctic archipelago.

With files, from CP, CBC, Global, Globe and Mail