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Saturday, 11 September 2010

Ivaar Bardarson's Glacier -- then and now






The recent comment on this blog about changes in the East Greenland glaciers prompted me to look at Ivaar Bardarson's Glacier, which flows down from the Staunings Alps and decants (or at least, it used to) into the valley of the Schuchert River. The terminal moraine complex was once so vast that it pushed the Schuchert River right over towards the eastern edge of the braided river plain. The black and white photo shows what the glacier was like when we walked across the snout in 1962. The colour photo, from Google Earth, shows just how much the glacier snout has retreated up into its trough over 50 years or so.

See the big lake just right of centre in the colour photo? You can see the same lake in the B/W photo. That's where the snout was around 1955-60.

Will it ever recover? Well, this is a surging glacier prone to erratic behaviour, but the signs are not good......

By the way, on the satellite image east is at the bottom and south is to the left.

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