The Columbia Glacier in Alaska’s Prince William Sound is retreating at incredible speeds.  During the past two years, the glacier has increased its rate of retreat to approximately 1km a year.  This is particularly impressive because the Columbia Glacier is flowing downhill at rates of up to 34 meters a day, one of the fastest flow rates in the world.

For 2000 years, the Columbia Glacier slowly advanced from 10,000 feet of elevation in the Chugach Mountains to its terminus in Prince William Sound.  When it reached the sound, it stopped advancing and remained static for almost 200 years while the rate of ablation matched the rate of sublimation.  During this time, the glacier built up a terminal moraine that lent it further stability.  In 1982, the balance began to tip in favor of sublimation and the glacier began to retreat.

Once the glacier stepped back from the moraine, it was left floating in deep water.  At its terminus, it is 1,000 feet deep and 3 miles wide.  A floating mass of ice this size is extremely unstable and the glacier’s calving rate increased.  As the rate of retreat increased, both flow velocity and extensional stretching of the glacier also increased.

Scientists studying the glacier are learning a lot about poorly understood tidewater glacial systems.  The high flow velocity of tidewater glaciers is accomplished by gravitational pull and basal sliding.  Flow velocity increases in the downhill direction so that the glacier is moving fastest at its toe.  This causes the glacier to stretch which in turn causes it to thin.  Thinning reduces the overburden pressure on the base of the glacier.  For landlocked glaciers, a lessening of overburden pressure would result in a reduction of pressure melting at the base, slowing the advance.  Because the base of the Columbia Glacier is below sea level, basal water pressure remains constant and contact between the base of the glacier and the underlying bed is reduced. 

The result is increased sliding which leads to increased thinning which in turn reduces overburden pressure which leads to increased sliding.  The Columbia Glacier appears to be caught in a vicious cycle that may explain why tidewater glacial retreat is a seemingly irreversible process.

Since the mid-1970’s, the Columbia Glacier has been the subject of a lot of research, partly because it offers a unique opportunity for scientists to study the dynamics of tidewater glacial retreat.  But the glacier has also been scrutinized because of its threat to more than 600 oil tankers that pass through Prince William Sound each year.  In 1989, the Exxon Valdez changed its course to avoid a chunk of ice from the Columbia Glacier and ran into an underwater reef, spilling 11 million gallons of oil.  In the past two years, the calving rate has increased dramatically and during August and September, geologists estimate that the glacier dumps 1,000 tons of ice into Prince William Sound each second posing an ever increasing danger.

REFERENCES:

• Pfeffer, W.T., Cohn, J., Meier, M., and Krimmel, R.M., 2000, Alaskan glacier beats a dramatic retreat:  EOS Transactions v.81, no. 48, p. 577.

Other Feature Articles in this chapter:  1  :  2

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