This is a true color,
vertical satellite image of the Taku Glacier in Alaska, captured in medium
resolution by Landsat 8 on August 9, 2019. This snowy glacier dominates the
left portion of the image, with vegetation-covered mountains towards the lower
right hand corner. The Taku Glacier is one of the thickest alpine glaciers in
the world, and it showed no signs of retreat until the 1990’s, when its advance
slowed and some thinning occurred; the glacier began its full retreat in 2018.
When comparing this image to an image captured on August 14, 2014 (see the NASA
link below), the glacier’s mass and snow loss around the terminus are apparent,
especially where the glacier meets the river. This image, which shows the
sudden retreat of one of the world’s thickest glaciers, forces us to imagine
the effect that increasingly warmer global temperatures will have on glaciers of
all sizes worldwide. The Taku Glacier’s retreat presents yet another chilling
example of the detrimental impact of climate change on Earth’s natural cycles.
New York Post article link to original
image (Note that the New York Post article misreports the image date as
2018 when it was really captured in 2019, according to NASA’s official site
below):
NASA’s Earth Observer link to comparison photo of glacier
2014 versus 2019:
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