As Mt. Rainier's Glaciers Recede, Destabilized Slopes Fill Streams, Block Roads W. Debris & Mud

[hatrack]

"This is it in spades," said Park Service geologist Paul Kennard, scrambling up a 10-foot-tall mass of dirt and boulders bulldozed back just enough to clear the road. As receding glaciers expose crumbly slopes, vast amounts of gravel and sediment are being sluiced into the rivers that flow from the Northwest's tallest peak. Much of the material sweeps down in rain-driven slurries called debris flows.

"The rivers are filling up with stuff," Kennard said from his vantage point atop the pile. He pointed out ancient stands of fir and cedar now up to their knees in water. Inside park boundaries, rivers choked with gravel are threatening to spill across roads, bump up against the bottom of bridges and flood the historic complex at Longmire. Downstream, communities in King and Pierce counties are casting a wary eye at the volcano in their backyard. There are already signs that riverbeds near Auburn and Puyallup are rising. As glaciers continue to pull back, the result could be increased flood danger across the Puget Sound lowlands for decades.

"There is significant evidence that things are changing dramatically at Mount Rainier," said Tim Abbe, of the environmental consulting firm ENTRIX. "We need to start planning for it now," added Abbe, who helps analyze Mount Rainier's river systems. Similar dynamics are playing out at all the region's major glaciated peaks, from Mount Jefferson to Mount Baker, said research hydrologist Gordon Grant, of the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station in Corvallis, Ore.

Climate experts blame global warming, triggered by emissions from industries and cars, for much of the ongoing retreat of glaciers worldwide. North Cascades National Park has lost half of its ice area in the past century. Mount Rainier's glaciers have shrunk by more than a quarter. "Every year it's been either bad or really bad," Kennard said. "This year it was really, really bad."

EDIT

http://www.physorg.com/news182111641.html

[GMA]

1. Well, then. I guess we'll all just die.

n/t

[Zoeisright]

3. Well, yes.

Things don't look good at all for the human race's long-term survival.

[ensho]

2. tick

nt

[GliderGuider]

7. tick

nt

[pscot]

4. From Puyallup to Yelm

here are more than a million people living around the west side of the volcano. The subdivisions they live in are built atop debris deposited by lahars that spilled down off the mountain. Rainier is basically a big ash heap. The old mudflows, and some not so old, reach as far as Tacoma. There is an alarm system designed to warn people in the event of a mud flow, but nobody knows if it will actually work, or even if an exodus is possible. Traffic congestion out there is ugly during a normal rush hour. In a panic situation, there would be absolute chaos. The idea of it scares the crap out of emergency planners.

[MidwestTransplant]

5. But but but it's cold here. I thought the earth was cooling. Or so I read on Freerepublic.

[progressoid]

6. It's cyclical!

That's the latest big word they've learned. Cyclical!!

[jimlup]

8. I stood on Rainier's summit twice this summer

We had great climbing weather pretty much all summer. The temperatures in Seattle were unusually high in June.
Rainier looked bare to me though I've been told that the Nisqually glacier has been growing the last few years.

[depakid]

9. We used to trek up to Paradise Ice caves in the summer

One year, they were gone. Just gone.

[depakid]

10. They were incredibly beautiful. btw:

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The Paradise Ice Caves (also known as the Paradise Glacier Caves) were a system of interconnected glacier caves located withn Mount Rainier's Paradise Glacier in the United States. At one time, they were the longest mapped system of glacier caves in the world. The caves vanished during the 1990s due to ongoing recession of the Paradise Glacier. The lower lobe of the glacier which once contained the caves also vanished entirely between 2004 and 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Ice_Caves