#KaskawulshGlacier, #Yukon, #SlimsRiver, #BeringSea, #KaskawulshRiver, #GulfOfAlaska, #PacificOcean, #DanShugar, #University of Washington,              #Haines Junction #JamesBest, #USA, #Nature Geoscience,  #University Of Illinois,      #Kluane National Park and Reserve
 
Dan Shugar, a geoscientist at the University of Washington Tacoma and lead author of a study published on April 17 in the journal Nature Geoscience, and his team were able to document the retreat of Kaskawulsh Glacier, one of Canada’s largest glaciers, abruptly and radically altering the regional drainage pattern in spring 2016, media reports said.

This magnitude of retreat, reported by scientists, which suddenly switched direction had not been documented before in modern times, CBCNews reports said.

"Climate change is happening, is affecting us and it's not just about far-off islands in the South Pacific. It's not just about sea-level rise for them, said Shugar, and added, "The effects can be very rapid and can be somewhat unanticipated," CBCNews reports said

This geologic phenomenon, also known as stream capture or river piracy, pointed to a direction where a stream or river is diverted toward another body of water caused usually by a landslide or glacial dam collapse.

"This was the first event we could find where river piracy occurred right under our noses and due to contemporary climate change," said Shugar, CBCNews reports said.

Previous cases of river piracy may have taken place thousands of years ago or more, said Shugar in an interview with CBC News.

Shugar and his team of scientists had stumbled upon this change last summer by accident when Shugar and colleague James Best, a professor of geology and geography from the University of Illinois, travelled to the Slims River in the Kluane National Park and Reserve west of Haines Junction, Yukon.

"We went there anticipating low flow and it turned out to be no flow," said Shugar, CBCNews reports said.

Both Best and Shugar were taken aback by this change. Instead of seeing blue, shimmering shallow water, they could see only exposed and dried sediments which turned into a huge dust storm due to blowing of strong winds.

The group decided to research further with a mapping drone to help survey the area and discovered that previously glacier had melted into two ponds and flowed into the Slims  and had carved a new 30-metre canyon through the glacier towards a lower elevation.

As a result of the glacier retreating about 1.6 kilometres over the past 100 years, the meltwater had now found a steeper gradient down to one river instead of the other, said Best.

Although their colleague and co-author John Clague had guessed in a 2006 study that the Slims River would eventually disappear, they did not predict the timeframe.

River gauges showed there was an abrupt drop in the water level in just four days between May 26 and May 29, 2016.

Best said that witnessing this phenomenon provided them with a very good opportunity for research that has implications and long-lived potential effects, not only on the landscape but everything that inhabits and lives on and in the landscape.

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)

Image of River Piracy: Courtesy of The Daily Star

#Iceberg, #NorthAtlantic, #Grand Banks of Newfoundland, #Titanic,  #SidHynes, #Canada, #Trans- AtlanticVessels, #GabrielleMcGrath, #International IcePatrol

Over the past week more than 400 icebergs had drifted into the North Atlantic shipping lanes which slowed down the vessels to a mere crawling or forced their detours of hundreds of miles, media reports said.

These numbers were unusually large seen only during late May or early June, average for this time of year being about 80, CBCNews reports said.

The number of icebergs had spiked earlier this week from 37 to about 450 near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, according to the U.S. Coast Guard's International Ice Patrol in New London, Connecticut, CBCNews reports said.

Experts attributed this phenomenon to global warming and blowing of strong winds in the counter-clockwise direction that caused breaking off chunks of the Greenland ice sheet and float away.

The icebergs In the waters close to where the Titanic went down in 1912, had been forcing ships to take precautions.

Trans-Atlantic vessels were forced to detour, instead of cutting straight across the ocean, that had been adding around 640 kilometres to the trip equal to a day and a half of added travel time for many large cargo ships.

Cargo ships owned by Oceanex near the Newfoundland coast, had to throt way back to 3 or 4 knots to get to their homeport in St. John's, which had added up to a day to the trip, said executive chairman, Capt. Sid Hynes.

He said One ship was pulled out of service for repairs after hitting a chunk of ice and added all these made everything so expensive.

Coast Guard Cmdr. Gabrielle McGrath, who leads the ice patrol, said it was for the first time that she had seen such a drastic increase in such a short time and predicted a fourth consecutive extreme ice season with more than 600 icebergs in the shipping lanes.

In 2014, there were 1,546 icebergs in the shipping lanes, the sixth most severe season on record since 1900, according to the patrol. There were 1,165 icebergs in 2015 and 687 in 2016.

The International Ice Patrol was formed after the sinking of the Titanic to monitor iceberg danger in the North Atlantic and warn ships. It conducts inspection of flights that are used to produce charts.
In 104 years, according to the ice patrol, no ships that were warned had struck an iceberg.

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)

​Image of iceberg: Wikipedia

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#Biodiversity, #ecosystems, #TeroMustonen, #KaisuMustonen, #SockeyeSalmon, #BritishColumbia, #Canada, #ClimateChange, #Snowchange

A new all-inclusive study named “Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being”, published Friday in Science, showed some species moving to cooler areas of the planet to survive the climate change, media reports said.

The study pointed out that addressing climate change should go hand in hand with the effects of biodiversity redistribution but unfortunately this is not being incorporated in most adaptation strategies, CBCNews reports said.

Authors of the study, Tero Mustonen and Kaisu Mustonen, published on March 31, 2017 in Science said that the geography of life being shifted due to climate change will directly effect the work of the human beings causing the disruption of the ecological structure of the planet, CBCNews reports said.

Sockeye salmon are just one species that is being impacted by warming ocean water and more acidic conditions caused by climate change and they need to stay in cool water in order to survive.
"We will enter a century of unprecedented change," said Mustonen who is from Finland, works for an Arctic NGO called Snowchange, and has also spent two decades researching in British Columbia said that due to the shortage of time policy makers of climate change needed to be more careful in making decisions.

For the last 25,000 years, said Mustonen, it is the biggest change in species which will have profound consequences for British Columbia where province's iconic salmon is already being affected by warmer ocean temperatures.

According to the report, this is happening all across the planet and the, "shifts will leave winners and losers in their wake, radically reshaping the pattern of human well-being between regions and different sectors and potentially leading to substantial conflict," CBCNews reports said.

The study and its authors hoped to convince policy makers to include the well-being of species as they try to manage climate change.

Mustonen’s research findings about the traditional knowledge of First Nation and how it could contribute towards halting climate change made him optimistic.

He also urged the average citizen to work within their own communities to help restore and maintain watersheds.

"The endemic species of this place, for example the Fraser [River] catchment area, salmon and all the other species, here could have more resilience when there's more natural habitat or restored habitat," said Mustonen.
 
(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)
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Image of Sockeye salmon: Wikipedia