Ben Pelto, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia, said: “A lot of times we go to a stake, and you can see it, but there’s a moat 10 to 20 feet wide. feet,” said Ben Pelto, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia. “And it was like, well, there’s no way we can get over that deposit anymore. It affects the amount of research you can do and the safety you can do. “
The danger is also heightened for researchers working on snowy mountain roads. For Karapetrova, a large change in temperature can cause rockfall or avalanches, sending her dangerously over the mountains near Lake June in California, where she collects her snow samples.
Every researcher mentioned having to move their sampling seasons earlier or have to work faster for fewer months because of the longer and warmer summers. Karapetrova was limited to collecting samples in June and July, when before that scientists could collect them all in August. Jason Geck, an associate professor at the University of the Pacific Alaska specializing in ice University, has been taking students on an annual study trip in May to collect samples on the Eklutna glacier near Anchorage for more than a decade — but he had to move it to April because melting was happening before that.
“It’s great to have a few students out on the glacier for two or three weeks to get real-world experience,” he said. “Now it is being condensed into a day. From an educational perspective, students suffer a lot.” Geck has also used helicopters for travel, rather than hiking or skiing, for efficiency and safety – which, of course, contributes even more to climate change.
As the safety and accessibility of alpine and glacier ice decreases, the biggest loss is data consistency. Even simply shifting the data collection sites a few hundred meters or from one side of the glacier to the other can make a difference. Some areas of the glacier have more shade, slope, or more wind, which changes the rate at which snow accumulates and melts.
And the data loss is getting bigger and bigger. A weather station on the Gulkana Glacier in the eastern Alaska Range, which has been collecting weather data since the 1960s, will be shut down for the next three years. As the glacier receded, it left behind pockets of ice from which the rock could slip making access to the station too difficult and dangerous, ending a consistent weather record spanning more than half a century. There’s a new weather station a few miles from the glacier that will replace it, but it will never be exactly the same.
“Any long-term series data is very valuable,” says Geck. His biggest fear is when he comes to a mass balance stake and finds it lying on its side because the snow has melted too much to keep it upright. “It’s not a fun thing to show up and see your pole on the ground,” he said. Geck estimates that every time a pole falls, it loses about $1,000 in labor, equipment, and knowledge. He’s started putting in time-lapse cameras to record bets, so if they fall, he knows when and can still extract some information.
