Athabasca Glacier could disappear within generation, says manager

What's believed to be the most-visited glacier in North America is losing more than five metres of ice every year and is in danger of completely disappearing within a generation, says a Parks Canada manager.

The Athabasca Glacier is the largest of six ice sheets that formpart of the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park. Itis apopular destination for tourists from around the world who climbaboard huge snow coaches to get an up-closelook.

While it receives about seven metres of snowfall annually, theglacier has been slowly shrinking for about 150 years.

"It's astonishing," John Wilmshurst, Jasper National Park'sresource conservation manager, said in an interview with TheCanadian Press.

"Every year we drive stakes five metres deep into the glacier inthe fall. We have to return and re-drill them in mid-summer becausea lot of those stakes on the Athabasca Glacier, the one that a lotof people go visit, will be lying flat onthe ice at that time.

"We're losing at least five metres a year on the surface of that glacier."

Glacier has retreated significantly

The passage of time is clearly visible at the ice sheet's base. Markers dating back as early as 1890 show the toe of theAthabascaGlacier has retreated 1.5 kilometres, leaving a moonscape of graveland rock behind.

"We're doing our measurement close to the toe of the glacier andthe amount of growth each year is dwarfed by theamount it recedes," said Wilmshurst.

Bob Sandford, chairman of the Canadian Partnership Initiative ofthe UN Water for Life Decade, said it's "mind boggling"becausenot only is the glacier receding it's also becoming more shallow.

"I first wrote a tourist book on the Columbia Icefields in 1994and it was generally held that it was somewhere around325 squarekilometres. That icefield now is calculated to be about 220 square kilometres," he said.

"Even though this year we will have had a fairly substantialsnow year, what we're finding is that, even with substantialsnowyears, the summers are warm enough and the fall is prolonged enoughthat all of that snow goes andwe're still losing five metres,"Sandford said.

"That gives you an indication of how rapidly things arechanging."

Shrinking glaciers pose big problems

A recent American state-of-the-union report has singled out therapid melt of glaciers in British Columbia and Alaska asa majorclimate change issue saying they are "shrinking substantially."

The U.S. National Climate Assessment said the trend is expected to continue and has implications for hydro-powerproduction, oceancirculation patterns, fisheries and a global rise in sea levels.

The report said glaciers in the region are losing 20 to 30 percent as much as what is melting annually from the Greenland IceSheet, which has received far more worldwide attention.

Wilmshurst said it's estimated that the Athabasca Glacier is about 300 metres deep, but it is slowly disappearing.

Water from the Columbia Icefields flow into the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans and the landscape will be muchdifferent if it iseventually gone.

"It is hard to know in the long term what climate cycles mean topeople. It does mean we should be preparing for drier conditions inthe future. I think long term it's not good news at all," he said.

"Absolutely the glacier will be gone. Not within my lifetime,probably, but maybe within my children's lifetime."