Case Study: Glacial Retreat

Part A: 1) In the Himalayas the glaciers are melting a lot faster than in other places on Earth because the rise in temperature is a lot more than anywhere else. Since the Himalayas help feed some of Asia's major rivers and other water sources, the melting is helping with that a lot more, but at the same time could cause potential overflow and flooding if they start melting at faster rates. Glacier National Park is also experiencing the melting of glaciers and here it is very clear, since they aren't huge glacier packs and it is very easy to see where they are you can see how much over the years they've melted away. GNP is mainly being affected by less snow in the winters and warmer summers. In Antarctica there's a peninsula made up of mountainous glaciers which home to many breeding grounds for animals. If the warming continues all year long it will be pretty devastating because there will be major impacts and new rock and permafrost will become visible and the ability to breed for the animals will be harder since there won't be as much surface area for all the animals and less places to be safe.

2) Social impacts could consist of a loss of tourists wanting to visit the area and therefore meaning that locals who live near the glacier may miss out on extra income from tourism. Other factors are unreliable snowfall which could result in there not being enough snow for winter sports such as skiing and snowboarding. That would also mean a loss of tourists for those winter sports as well. This could cause a sharp increase of unemployment would arise in these areas and locals may be forced to move away to look for work in more residential areas.  Environmental impacts at a global scale could contribute to sea-level rise, a change with significant consequences in coastal areas around the globe. That being said, some small areas near mountains with melting glaciers could have small rivers and other water resources overflow and flood. In a long term stand point most regions of the world, glaciers are now providing less water than before to the rivers immediately below them, reducing the availability of an economically important resource. Economy would be really impacted and have lots of tourism and water resources shut down which means losses of businesses causing unemployment, like I mentioned earlier. Also, damages could happen if floods are to happen and if it gets really bad there could also be people who become homeless, but that is very unlikely to happen. 

Part B: Lots of the tourist attractions involving glaciers will be greatly affected as they melt and retreat away. Less tourists would come to see the area and money would become harder to come by with business depleting. Also, with less snow falling because of warmer weather and the melting ice off the glaciers flushing it away will make it less likely to have huge snowfalls meaning harder to run winter sports such as snowboarding and skiing. This in the far future could be a major impact on the winter olympics. We have already seen examples of this with our past winters having a lot less snow and back in 2010 when we had to get snow for the mountains for the winter olympics. I personally have been to Jasper to the ice fields and been out on the glaciers and you could see where the ice had gotten soft and melted away and also they had pictures of what it use to look like. 

Part C: New Zealand glaciers have been retreating since 1890, with an acceleration of this retreat since 1920. Most of the glaciers have thinned measurably and have reduced in size, and the snow accumulation zones have risen in elevation during the 20th century. These large, rapidly flowing glaciers situated on steep slopes have been very reactive to small mass-balance changes. A few years of conditions favorable to glacier advance, such as more westerly winds and a resulting increase in snowfall, are rapidly echoed in a corresponding advance, followed by equally rapid retreat when those favorable conditions end.