Mt. St. Helens: What's an expanding Glacier doing wrapped around the volcanic dome?!

The life and persistence of this glacier, in light of the Global Warming boogeyman, is simply mindboggling.

Despite living wrapped around an active volcana dome, and constant rock slides and so on, you'd think there would be no glacier to be found here.



Mt St Helens in 1980, about the same time all the worlds other glaciers were allegidly being lost forever:



Post-eruption:


Modern Activity:
IMG: A steam plume rises from the mountain in December 2004



March 8, 2005 Eruption:









Today's Crater Glacier:

None of the ice is older than the year 1980, however, the volume of the new glacier is about the same as all the pre–1980 glaciers combined.
en.wikipedia.org...

NOTE: It's on both the left and right sides of the dome.

It may be dirty, and it may appear small from these images, but it turns out to be rather formidable.

The ice is very thick, averaging of 328 feet (100 meters) and a maximum thickness of around 656 feet (200 meters); nearly as deep as Mount Rainier's Carbon Glacier.
en.wikipedia.org...

So it turns out glciers can do well if fed with snowfall. Take Al Gore's beloved Mt. Kilimanjaro for example:

Lake evaporation indicates a decrease in precipitation and cloudiness around Kilimanjaro.
"Less cloud coverage lets more sunlight filter through and hit the glaciers," Hastenrath said. "That increase in sunlight then provides more energy for evaporation of the glacier."
news.nationalgeographic.com...

While apparently the air was cold enough:

Others, including Hardy and Lonnie Thompson, who released the 2000 Ohio State University report, believe that colder air surrounding the glacier kept its walls frozen even as portions of the interior melted away.
news.nationalgeographic.com...

I guess what this all means is to be sure they prove that man-introduced CO2 specifically made the precipitation over any glacier in question go away.

[edit on 17-7-2007 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

didn't you know that isolated examples that buck the trend are 'statistically insignificant' and therefore irrelevant to the discussion of GW ?

at least, that's what you're going to hear from the more versed AGW'ers around here. - IF you're lucky enough to keep the thread afloat, of course.

the bottom line, imho, is that whenever you look abit closer, the PR work with its dreaded omissions becomes apparent and sweeping claims of 'worldwide' melting, or disappearing glaciers 'on the Northern Hemisphere' turn out to be based on a few cherry-picked samples which themselves don't even hold water, in a historical perspective.

since this pattern keeps showing up everywhere in the realm of AGW, it can't really be coincidential, can it?


PS: a dirty glacier should melt pretty soon, unless the crater rim is blocking the sun most of the time, maybe other glaciers in roughly the same area mirror the trend? i'll try to verify by the end of the day.



[edit on 18.7.2007 by Long Lance]

Not sure how any of these has anything to do with global warming?

The only mystery is why the lava dome didn't entirely melt the glacier. But it's quite normal for active volcanoes to have glaciers on them.

Originally posted by Essan
Not sure how any of these has anything to do with global warming?

The only mystery is why the lava dome didn't entirely melt the glacier. But it's quite normal for active volcanoes to have glaciers on them.

Uhhh. How about the fact that this glacier is growing in spite of the insistance from the GW people that all of the world's glaciers are melting?

Originally posted by JIMC5499

Originally posted by Essan
Not sure how any of these has anything to do with global warming?

Uhhh. How about the fact that this glacier is growing in spite of the insistance from the GW people that all of the world's glaciers are melting?

Lots of glaciers around the world are growing. In some cases glaciers are growing alongside other glaciers that are receding. In the case of Mt St Helens though it seems to be the lava dome which is at least partially responsible for the glacier's growth:

Cooling rock on the outside of the dome insulated the glacier from the lava, and only about 10 percent of the glacier melted, said Carolyn Driedger, a USGS hydrologist. Instead, the dome, growing by a pickup truckload of lava every two seconds, split the glacier into two moraines – deposits of glacial rock and soil – pressing each against the crater walls. The pinching forced the glacier arms to double in depth and increase their speed

(my emphasis)


Of course, glaciers advance and recede for all manner of reasons other than just temperature changes - and those arguing both for and against global warming often misinterpret what is happening in some individual cases (like Upsala).

[edit on 18-7-2007 by Essan]