Monday, April 07, 2008

Time-Lapse Video: Retreating Glacier

This remarkable image sequence captures a series of massive calving events at Columbia Glacier near Valdez, Alaska. Composed of 436 frames taken between May and September of 2007, it shows the glacier rapidly retreating by about half a mile (1.6 kilometers), a volume loss of some 0.4 cubic miles (1.67 cubic kilometers) of ice or 400 billion gallons (1.5 trillion liters) of water.


This just might make your jaw drop a bit.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I teach mountaineering up in the alaskan mountains, and I've spent a lot of time in the Chugatch and I've been on the Columbia Glacier (shown in this video)

It's a weird thing to see.

Melting ice is hard to wrap your mind around. but the realities are creepy.

You hold a map in your hand, and it shows glacial ice, but you are standing on rocky moraine (that's what its called after a glacier retreats) but the map isn't that old.

pray for our fragile planet.

Anonymous said...

My God, the horror! I can't bel.....Oh look, monkeys riding little motorbikes!

Denny