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Title: Amid Global Warming, North America Has a New Glacier
Source:
MSN
URL Source: http://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/new ... ier/ar-AAg2ozR?ocid=spartandhp
Published: Dec 27, 2015
Author: staff
Post Date: 2015-12-27 21:13:45 by buckeroo
Keywords: None
Views: 431
Many of the world's glaciers are shrinking today at unprecedented rates, say climate scientists. Glaciers that have been there for millions of years, and the ice that's been flowing through them for tens of thousands of years, are now melting. Glacier National Park in Montana may be entirely glacier-free within a decade. But let me introduce you to the world's newest glacier, which is still getting bigger every year. It's an oddity on a warming earth. The eruption of Mt. St. Helens killed 57 people—and 12 glaciers. It may seem surprising that there's a growing baby glacier in Washington State, but its location is even more surprising: inside the steaming caldera of Mt. St. Helens itself! When St. Helens was still a placid Fuji-like cone, it was covered with a dozen small glaciers, but that all ended on May 18, 1980, when the top 1,300 feet of the mountain were blown off in a massive eruption of rock and lava. It was the largest landslide in recorded human history. A new glacier rises from the ashes. When the dust settled, the summit of Mt. St. Helens was a horseshoe-shaped ridge, a shadow of its former self. But speaking of shadows: the new horseshoe opens to the north, which means a lot of the crater is well-shaded from the sun. By 1988, there was snow and ice in the crater year-round, and by 1996 it was carving crevasses into the crater rim—making it, by definition, a glacier. The flowing layers of ice and rock were soon 660 feet deep. Glaciers can grow even amid an active volcanic inferno. In 2004, a second, slower eruption began at Mt. St. Helens, and geologists assumed that the new ice field would melt, causing new mudslides. In fact, the opposite happened. Amazingly, the hot magma pushed up a 900-foot-high dome inside the crater, shielding the baby glacier even more effectively. All winter, snow and ice slides down the crater rim into the glacier, so it's still expanding—though recent hot summers have slowed its growth somewhat. Almost no one can visit the glacier, and no one knows what to call it. The glacier is still off-limits to hikers, except for those who pay a hefty fee for a guided tour to its base. Geologists from the U.S. Geological Survey are the only ones who get the real fun: the chance to rappel down 90 feet through the glacier's "Godzilla Hole" into a maze of tunnels where ice is sculpted into eerie shapes by hot volcanic gas venting from below. Washington (the state) still calls the glacier "Tulutson," using a local Indian word for ice, while Washington (the federal government) has officially (but boringly) dubbed it Crater Glacier. Let's hope the glacier sticks around long enough to have to settle this question of its name at some point. Will wonders never seize?
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