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Are glaciers growing or retreating?

What the science says...

Select a level... Basic Intermediate


Climate Myth...

Glaciers are growing





Figure 2:  Percentage of shrinking and growing glaciers in 2008–2009, from the 2011 WGMS report



Basic rebuttal written by dana1981

Update July 2015:



Last updated on 6 July 2015 by pattimer. View Archives

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Further viewing

Time lapse photography of shrinking glaciers:


Comments 1 to 48:

  1. John This is a strange claim: Global warming causing California glacier to grow (Wednesday, July 9, 2008) "the seven glaciers on Shasta, part of the Cascade mountains in northern California, seem to be benefiting from the warming ocean"
  2. Can the list of increasing glaciers be subdivided, by explanations, in a meaningful way? I. WARMER POLAR SEAS GW EXPLANATION The increased snowfall in central Greenland and Antarctica is due to the increased evaporation from the warmer polar seas around them. Could this same reason apply to western Norway (Briksdal Glacier) and the west coast of South New Zealand (Franz Josef Glacier, Fox Glacier)? "But Salinger said New Zealand glaciers were boosted by extremely high rainfall, with more than 10m a year falling west of the Southern Alps' main divide. "Most glaciers, except for some in parts of Norway, were in areas of lower rainfall and were affected more quickly by rising temperatures." Taipei Times And PIO XI Glacier(Chile) , and Perito Moreno Glacier(Argentina), are even further south... Iam making my argument despite the following article...which goes into greater detail. I am referring to the higher temperatures after several decades of GW. And simply extending the analogy: IF warmer seas lead to increased snowfall on Greenland and Antarctica, THEN... "RECENT GLACIER ADVANCES IN NORWAY AND NEW ZEALAND... "Norway and New Zealand both experienced recent advances, commencing in the early 1980's and ceasing around 2000, which were more extensive than any other since the end of the Little Ice Age. Common to both countries, the positive glacier balances are associated with an increase in the strength of westerly atmospheric circulation which brought increased precipitation..." Norway=f(North Atlantic Oscillation) New Zealand=f(Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, El Nino/Southern Oscillation) II. MISCELLANEOUS GW EXPLANATIONS The Karakorum Mountains are mentioned above. ???Alaska's increasing coastal glaciers??? "...Hubbard Glacier is the largest of eight calving glaciers in Alaska that are currently increasing in total mass and advancing. All of these glaciers calve into the sea, are at the heads of long fiords, have undergone retreats during the last 1,000 years, calve over relatively shallow submarine moraines, and have unusually small ablation areas compared to their accumulation areas." "...were retreating throughout the Little Ice Age (AD1350 or 1450 to AD 1900) when most glaciers were growing." Jan 2003 Icy Bay glaciers, Alaska: "puzzled by the glaciers' advance because all three glaciers moved forward at the same time, possibly because of a high snowfall year in the upper reaches of the glaciers, or rainfall down low, that could lubricate the glacier's sliding surface, the bedrock beneath them." June, 2007 (January 2007 was the warmest globally, I believe, so the La Nina hasn't started yet.) Icy Bay is located near the Hubbard Glacier, on the Gulf of Alaska. Note that all eleven of these increasing glaciers are located on the coast. I couldn't find an Alaskan map locating its glaciers. But Google Earth suggests that the largest glaciers are on the coast, and behind it; in an arc around the Gulf of Alaska. Winter Land and Ocean Surface Temperature trend maps seem to indicate cooler water near the Gulf of Alaska, but warmer water way out in the north Pacific. NOAA Wind Direction vectors for January pass thru the warm Pacific area, and head toward this coast. Could the increasing Alaskan glaciers be attributed to Global Warming via the warmer waters in the north Pacific? III. OTHER (NON-GW) EXPLANATIONS Mount Shasta is mentioned above. The Mount Shasta explanation would also cover two small glaciers nearby in the Trinity Alps. "Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of the 625 mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Group in Zurich..." A skepticalscience listing on this page, it is from a 2007-12-23 dated website. Obviously, '1980' seems pretty irrelevant. And,from the table above, 7% are increasing. "Crater Glacier" is inside the Mount St. Helens crater. "Shadowed by the crater walls and fed by heavy snowfall and repeated snow avalanches, it grew rapidly..." This sounds like a special case, to me...a 'shadow' glacier. "In addition, since 2004, new glaciers have formed on the crater wall above Crater Glacier, feeding rock and ice onto its surface below." "Very high-elevation Mont Blanc glaciated areas not affected by the 20th century climate change..." "...the mass balance of the glaciers is strongly controlled by precipitation, not temperature." This list is from a skeptic website that, among many other things, lists articles about 'GROWING' glaciers. I have not included the more recent, post La Nina, situations.
  3. ........SKEPTIC SOURCES My focus above was on increasing glaciers that were referred to by skeptics. I got them from an endless skeptic bibliography...that's split up into a hundred subdivisions. index.php?showtopic=2050 GW skepticism being what it is, the counter argument was often also there, in the same article. In addition, there'd be some "google words", on which to continue. The other skeptic source I know about is also subdivided; and includes some text, with a literature review. A neophyte believer blogger's first source would likely be a skeptical argument website, like skeptical Is appinsys the first source for a neophyte skeptic blogger? It would be useful to know where the other blogger is getting his information. For example, I've always been amazed at skeptics' ability to produce weather related fatality statistics. When I've never seen any. Until... There's no hope for the cynical skeptic, who'll cherrypick anything anywhere. And the gullible skeptic can probably be reached only on his own entry level conspiracies. But I think the more open-minded ('skeptical') skeptic would eventually see through this disjointed collection of counter arguments...that don't add up to a realistic whole. Are there any other useful skeptic sources?
  4. Another collective datapoint: Almost 90 percent of Austrian glaciers shrank in 2009, some by as much as 46 metres (150 feet), the Austrian Alpine Association (OeAV) said Friday. In a report, the OeAV said 85 out of 96 glaciers had shrunk over the past year. The biggest changes were seen in the Oetz valley in western Tyrol province, where three glaciers retreated by over 40 metres, and eight by over 20 metres. "The ice is very thin over large areas, so the glaciers are retreating very quickly," noted Andrea Fischer of the University of Innsbruck, who conducted the measurements for the alpine club. One glacier bucked the trend and expanded, but only by a few dozen centimetres. Temperatures were higher than average by about 0.2 degrees Celsius in the winter of 2008-2009 and by 2.1 degrees last summer, the OeAV noted. More: Almost all Austrian glaciers shrank in 2009
  7. Dave D: Unfortunately there's not a "real-time" glacier observing system, so we'll have to wait for 2009-2010 data to be made available. But the WGMS website does have updated information on glacier mass balance through 2007-2008: Overall, mass balance of the observed glaciers continues to be negative, but the loss of mass in 2007 and 2008 was less than in 2003 or 2006. I'm not sure what you mean by "The Arctic [Ice] has certainly recovered in area and thickness since 2007, but it is not talked about?" Are you referring to sea ice? The 2008 and 2009 minumum Arctic sea ice extent was above 2007, but still below the long-term downward trend (and far below the levels of the 1980s). I wouldn't call that a "recovery" unless it continues long enough that late-summer sea ice extent actually returns to normal. As for Arctic sea ice thickness, it clearly has not shown any sign of recovery; instead, it continues its downward trend:
  9. rockpicker - As addressed on this topic with multiple papers and lots of data, glaciers are not growing. There's also no indication that the level of undersea volcanism has changed in the last 100 years or so - and geothermal inputs are on the order of ~1% those of greenhouse gas effects. So changes in undersea volcanism isn't driving oceanic warming. Dr. Tim Ball is not what I would call a reliable source - he chairs the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, which is apparently run by energy industry lobbyists, as well as being one of the best known members of the Friends of Science group. He's a well known climate change skeptic with ties to industrial groups. I'll also point out that a show which " a broadcast vehicle for introducing new and ancient knowledge, solutions, discoveries, and compelling stories" doesn't sound like a great scientific forum - it sounds like something closer to "Ripleys Believe It Or Not!".
  10. rockpicker - "Dr. Tim Ball.....He said world glacier ice mass is currently growing" The World Glacier Monitoring Service say otherwise: Given that the last decade is the warmest in the instrumental record and 2010 the warmest year in that decade, Tim Ball's assertion seemed unlikely from the get-go. Does make you wonder why he would make such an erroneous claim, when it's so easy to check its' veracity.
  12. Starnut: Yawn. You're going to trust Crichton but not climate science. Lovely. Don't you think it's odd that someone would write a novel trying to scare people about a project designed to scare people? Where did you get that "over 100,000 glaciers" number, btw? And you don't think that monitoring, say, 10 glaciers in 10 different areas of the world will give us useful data? Or you think that these particular glaciers in the WGMS have been carefully selected by scientists who are in on the hoax? Also, what's a "short-term climate model"? Climate is 30 years, according to climatologists. Finally, speaking of zombies, the science of climate is, by most measures, about 150 years old. The basic radiative physics of CO2 have been established for about that long as well. It's established science. The remaining questions we have are mainly about ocean heating and and cloud effects.
  15. Anyone left clinging to the glacier growing myth? Explain the emergence of ice mummies. The discovery of Mr. Pabón’s partially preserved remains was one of a growing number of finds pulled from the world’s glaciers and snow fields in recent years as warmer temperatures cause the ice and snow to melt, exposing their long-held secrets. ... “It looks like the warming trend seen in many regions is continuing,” said Gerald Holdsworth, a glaciologist at the Arctic Institute of North America in Calgary, Alberta. “There are still some large snowbanks left in promising places, and many glaciers of all different shapes, orientations and sizes, so the finds could go on for a long time yet.”
  16. Glaciers hold only 1% of the planet’s ice. Antarctica and Greenland hold the rest, with the greatest amount in glaciers being in the Himalayas. I don't know how Cogley weighed his data. That the vast majority of glacial volume is in the Himalayas and that soot is causing more melting there than warming ( provides additional pause. A map is here: So, a chart of a sampling of ice loss from glaciers world wide says very little about what to expect from what really matters: temperature or sea level rise. That we are in a temperature peak that I believe to be mostly natural makes loss of loss from tiny glaciers that lack thermal inertia in extremely cold locations in isolated climate zones does not impress me as much as the idea that world sea ice is starting to melt in an actually meaningful manner. That the IPCC claimed the Himalayas would melt by 2035 means that unless those who allowed such a claim to pass through their peer review process need to go or I have little trust in current claims of impending doom. Addendum: The 5x5 temperature grids around the Himalayas actually do show a hockey stick shapes, adding a whopping 2 degrees since 1990!: So no wonder glacial melt is surging. Local heating over the Himalayas. This has been suggested to be due to local land use changes as a sudden 2 degree jump certainly isn't due to a local spike in CO2. Can I find this warming in a map? Nope! Evidently it must be a very local effect then if it doesn't show up as a very large super red region above India: But boy oh boy look at the extreme *cooling* in Antarctica where 90% of world ice is contained!



    A reliance on primary sources is best.

  18. NikFromNYC, you need to look at the story closer. As I recall, the 2035 claim was discussed on this site. The search engine works well. It turned out to be another molehill made into a mountain through the usual disingenuous methods. Tom addressed the Antarctic cooling canard. Overall, your post adds little that is of value for one seeking good information. Your claim that the Himalayan temperature increase is due to land use changes is not only unsubstantiated but unplausible considering how much is actually there to use and how long it has been used in one way or another. It's not like forests are being cut down on the icy slopes. As for what is useable, it is scarce and has been used by the locals for a very long time. Ramanathan has shown that, at the altitudes where the brown cloud aerosols are found, they exert a strong positive radiativce forcing. This forcing is a much better candidate for the temperature increase than your land use hypothesis. The glaciers get a double whammy from the black carbon deposited on their surface and the atmsopheric BC heating them up.
  23. So Henry, perhaps you would like to look at Mt Kilimanjaro for some discussion on this. Also: "Many glaciers have sublimated even when the temperature above the glacier was still below freezing" Now why do you think this is? You seem to be trying to say that glacier melting isn't a sign of temperature warmings, but actually temperature rise is symptom of increased surface radiation. Might not that have something to do with the ice melt.





    "Your reference did not address Antarctic underice/sea volcanoes"


  27. "Sublimation may indicate a change in atmospheric air streams to a drier air. Glacier melting from increased warming via conduction is certainly a factor, not necessarily air temps increases." And the evidence for this what? And where is the extra heat from conduction coming from? Almost of all of glacier melt is in the ablation zone, and in many cases, ice loss is accelerated by calving. As to the sudden appearance of volcanoes causing melting where it wasnt before, leaving aside the question that heat flow from volcanoes is very localised, in what ways would such melting be different than that caused by warming? And how does that compare with observation?
  28. Henry Justice @26, you continue to make a string of claims with no attempt to either justify, reference or defend them. That is called trolling. Forum rules forbid me from saying what I think of trolls. Take your claim about about Arctic volcanoes. A troll says "arctic volcanoes" ergo heat from volcanoes is melting the ice. Somebody with intellectual integrity, in contrast, would seek to answer several questions. a) The volcanoes are newly discovered, but are they newly existing? If they are not new volcanoes, then their presence is not a change to the Arctic heat budget and therefore cannot explain changes in Arctic ice extent. b) Can the heat from the volcanoes reach the surface? The answer here is not obvious. The Arctic is the location of a strong down welling current as part of the thermo-haline circulation. Therefore heat from subsurface volcanoes in that region are likely to be carried in the subsurface current into the depths of the Atlantic, and hence to the Antarctic rather than to simply be carried to the surface. c) Can the volcanoes significantly effect the surface temperature? There is a lot of water between the volcanoes and the surface, and water can absorb a lot of heat. To raise the temperature of surface water significantly, the volcanoes must raise the temperature of the entire water column. It is very unlikely that they have enough heat to do so. d) Do the volcanoes have enough heat to melt the ice? As it happens, summer Arctic sea ice reduces in volume by about 100 km^3 every year. That would require 3.34 x 10^19 Joules to melt. The heat from those undersea volcanoes comes to about 0.45 W/m^2 or less: That means there would need to be 2.35 million square kilometers of these under sea volcanoes to melt the ice. So are there? Have they found 2.35 million square kilometers of previously non-existing under sea volcanoes in the Arctic? Or is this just another trolling drive by. Trolling only works because the troll needs make no intellectual effort, while the rebuttal of the trolling does! I don't like that ratio, so if you are not a troll, you need to answer all four of my questions above, with linked or properly cited sources, and with the steps of your arguments clearly laid out. If you are not prepared to do so, then you clearly are a troll, which is sufficient rebuttal of any point you pretend to make. Trolls have no intellectual integrity - they have put no effort into forming their "opinions". Therefore they need be given no intellectual credence. Over to you.
  30. If I can't defend my comment by posting a reference, then would you please delete comments 26, 28, 29 and 30 in their entirety. Especially comment 30, since I see no mention of anything about the Arctic.
  31. Tom Curtis at 22: "you are assuming that Otzi died in an ice free area that later became glaciated." Here is what I stated: "Does this indicate the present melting of the glaciers are now back to the level where they were when this mummy was first frozen?" This does not state or indicate an ice free area!
  32. Here are my requested references : For the undersea volcanoes: (-Snip-) For the Under-Ice Antarctic Volcanoes and its effects: (-Snip-) Finally, here is a reference for a good discussion on melting glaciers: Behavior of World's Glaciers Fails to Prove Global Warming Theory by John Carlisle, Feb 1999.
  42. Ok, so what if I were to say the rapid decline(rate of change) after 1990 was also seen at the start of the graph in figure1(Basic). Does the graph in figure1 actually make any statment keeping this in mind?


    A regular doubling period is the exact definition for exponentiality... can anyone please tell me when the saviour of sinusoidality kicks in??

  44. Aerosols were likely the biggest contributor to glacial retreat in Europe from 1850 to 1910. Aerosol loading in the Himalayas due to Indian, European and African fossil fuel consumption are likely the largest contributors to glacial retreat in the Himalayas. There are uncertainties if aerosols from China make their way into the Himalayas.

    Aerosols reduce albedo and increase the skin temperature. This same effect, surface darkening effect (SDE), is also leading to a reduction in boreal forest snowpack accumulation (video). It is also having an effect on the Sierra Nevadas in California. The Himalayas is the largest reserve of ice outside of the polar regions. Anthropogenic aerosol forcing is largest contributor to this glacial retreat – not anthropogenic GHG forcing. There are many uncertainties regarding the role of aerosols in global warming; it is also the largest source of uncertainty regarding anthropogenic radiative forcing (IPCC chart).

  45. Supplemental reading:

    Preliminary data reported from the reference glaciers of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) in 2018 from Argentina, Austria, China, France, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and United States indicate that 2018 will be the 30th consecutive year of significant negative annual balance (> -200mm); with a mean balance of -1247 mm for the 25 reporting reference glaciers, with only one glacier reporting a positive mass balance (WGMS, 2018).

    Alpine glaciers: Another decade of loss, Guest Commentary by Mauri Pelto, RealClimate, Mar 25, 2019

  46. New data on glaciers:
    "Present mass-loss rates indicate that glaciers could almost disappear in some mountain ranges in this century"

  47. Recommended supplemental reading:

    Scientists have found warm water beneath Antarctica's "doomsday glacier," a nickname used because it is one of Antarctica's fastest melting glaciers. While researchers have observed the recession of the Thwaites Glacier for a decade, this marks the first time they detected the presence of warm water – found at a "vital point" beneath the glacier.

    A news release on the findings called it an alarming discovery.

    "The fact that such warm water was just now recorded by our team along a section of Thwaites grounding zone where we have known the glacier is melting suggests that it may be undergoing an unstoppable retreat that has huge implications for global sea-level rise," David Holland, director of New York University's Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and NYU Abu Dhabi's Center for Global Sea Level Change, which conducted the research, said in the news release.

    Scientists alarmed to discover warm water at "vital point" beneath Antarctica's "doomsday glacier" by Sophie Lewis, CBS News, Feb 1, 2020

  48. The recent article Antarctica melting: Climate change and the journey to the 'doomsday glacier' by Justin Rowlatt, BBC News, January 28, 2020, complements and supplements the items linked to by John Hartz @47.

    A relevant supplement provided in the article is the presentation showing that the elevation of a substantial portion of the ‘grounding surface’ under Antarctica’s ice, and almost all of the ‘grounding surface’ at the base of the Thwaites Glacier, is below sea level.

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