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Slip-sliding away

01 Mar 2009 - Preaching the News for Sunday

God promises Noah that "the waters shall never again become a flood." But scientists studying global warming in the Antarctic warn that worldwide sea levels may rise much more quickly than previously projected, causing widespread flooding. Antarctic glaciers are melting faster across a much wider area than previously thought, they said Wednesday. Previously most of the warming was thought to occur on the narrow stretch pointing toward South America, said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. But satellite data and automated weather stations indicate otherwise. "The warming we see in the peninsula also extends all the way down to what is called west Antarctica," Summerhayes said. "That's unusual and unexpected." The biggest west Antarctic glacier, the Pine Island Glacier, is moving 40 percent faster than it was in the 1970s, discharging water and ice more rapidly into the ocean, said Summerhayes. The Smith Glacier, also in west Antarctica, is moving 83 percent faster than it did in 1992, he said. All the glaciers in the area together are losing a total of around 114 billion tons per year. "That's equivalent to the current mass loss from the whole of the Greenland ice sheet," said Summerhayes. Source: An article by Eliane Engeler for the Associated Press

global warming flooding antarctica glaciers colin summerhayes scientific committee on antarctic research pine island glacier smith glacier
The view from the top isn’t pretty

02 Jun 2013 - Preaching the News for Sunday

Abram is blessed “by God Most High, the creator of heaven and earth,” we are told in this Sunday’s first reading. This week marks the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Mt. Everest, the world’s highest peak. But in the decades since (later Sir) Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first ascended Everest, the high-altitude landscape has changed dramatically, leaving the trail overcrowded and littered with refuse, critics complain. We read in the gospel account of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes that “the leftover fragments were picked up,” but in the harsh subzero extremes of 29,000 feet that becomes more difficult. The crowds leave behind signs that they’ve been there: empty oxygen canisters, torn tents, and “pyramids of human excrement,” according to one observer. Some 3,000 climbers have scaled the peak in the past half century, with several hundred people ascending each season. Deforestation was long an issue in areas where tourists cut down wood for warmth. (“They behave as though they are lords of the area,” complained Hillary 10 years ago.)On a single day in 2012, more than 230 people reached the summit, where waits of more than two hours in the harsh, sub-zero climate on the last leg of the ascent have become dangerously commonplace. In short, if the first climbers could see Everest now, they would “not have been happy”—or so Norgay’s son said in a recent interview.The damage from heavy traffic pales in comparison to the changes wrought to the landscape by global warming and the increase in carbon emissions, which researchers believe have shrunk Mt. Everest’s glaciers by 13 percent in the past 50 years and moved the snowline up more than nearly 600 feet.That’s a serious problem, environmentalists warn, because those are the same glaciers that feed the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, and Yellow Rivers, which provide drinking water and irrigation to an estimated 1.5 billion people in some of the world’s most populous regions.Both the Nepali government and a range of non-rofit groups, however, have signaled that they have plans for Everest’s recovery. Nepali officials are considering a limit on the number of climbers allowed on Everest, while an organization called Glacierworks has mobilized support for preserving the mountain’s glaciers.Homily hint: The world’s glaciers serve as the proverbial canary in the coal mine—they provide the earliest and most visible evidence that the earth is heating up. Encourage families to live as ecologically as possible so that the environmental footprint we leave behind won’t mar the landscape for those who travel this way after us. Sources: Articles by Adam Rainear and Caitlin Dewey for the Washington Post

global warming glaciers mount everest mountain climbing edmund hillary
Some glacier meltdown past point of no return

18 May 2014 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In the gospel this Sunday the risen Lord promises to return for his disciples and take them to new dwelling places prepared for them. We may need those dwelling places in the not-distant future, if global temperatures continue to rise unabated. As it stands, two studies released Monday signal that five glaciers in West Antarctica are undergoing irreversible decline extending over the next several hundred years, signaling a rise in sea levels anywhere from 4-12 feet.The glaciers that feed continental ice from Antarctica into the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean—glaciers long seen as the soft underbelly of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—are undergoing irreversible melting, the new studies indicate. The glaciers flowing into these waters, Antarctica's Amundsen Sea, carry enough ice to raise sea levels by nearly 4 feet, with effects that cascade to other sections of the ice sheet."We have passed the point of no return," said Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California at Irvine and the lead author of the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.The glaciers' retreat "will also influence adjacent sectors of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which could triple this contribution to sea level," he said during a briefing Monday. This would amount to a global average of 10-12 feet of sea-level rise.Estimates of the timing involved for the retreat of one of the two largest glaciers, the Thwaites Glacier, range from 200 to 900 years, according to another study, set to be published Friday in the journal Science. Through the rest of this century, the study anticipates relatively modest additions to sea level from Thwaites, after which the glacier's retreat accelerates. Regardless of the time span, however, the loss of the glaciers is virtually unstoppable, the researchers said.Homily hint: In ages past miners would keep a canary in a mineshaft because if it passed out and stopped singing, they knew something was wrong with the air and they would head for the exits. When it comes to Mother Earth, there is no exit we know of. The polar icecap is our canary: Are we listening to its weakening song? Source: An article by Pete Spotts for the Christian Science Monitor

antarctica glaciers