Image: Yakutat Icefield

Description: Yakutat Icefield, an expanse of ice of about 310 square miles in southeast Alaska, is considered by glaciologists to be among the ‘walking dead’. The icefield no longer has an accumulation zone – the upper part of a glacier, where mass gains from snowfall exceed ice loss. A 2015 study predicted that the whole icefield would be gone by the end of the century, with just little pockets of ice left. Martin Truffer, a researcher with University of Alaska, Fairbanks, performed field work in Yakutat just a few summers ago. He was surprised to see during an IceBridge flight on August 19, 2018, that the section of the glacier that his field site had been sitting by had since melted away. "To see that several miles of glacier that you once walked on no longer exist – well, that’s impressive," Truffer said. [NASA/Maria-José Viñas]
Title: Yakutat Icefield
Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa_ice/46706740694/
Author: NASA ICE
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
License: CC BY 2.0
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