The Columbia Glacier in southern Alaska has long been an archetype of the world’s most rapidly changing glaciers.
The Columbia Glacier in southern Alaska has long been an archetype of the world’s most rapidly changing glaciers. Today, additional tidewater glaciers across the planet have garnered attention from scientists for their collective potential to contribute to sea level rise. In the meantime, the remainder of Columbia Glacier has continued its decades-long course of retreat and thinning.
The ice of a tidewater glacier originates on land and flows downslope into seawater, where the glacier loses mass through the calving of icebergs. Columbia’s ice descends from an icefield 3,050 meters (10,000 feet) above sea level, down the flanks of the Chugach Mountains, and into a fjord that leads into Prince William Sound. The glacier once reached south across Columbia Bay to Heather Island. But since the 1980s, it has lost more than half of its total thickness and volume, and its front has retreated more than 20 kilometers (12 miles) north into the bay.
These images (above) reveal some of the more recent changes, showing the glacier’s position during the summers of 2019 (left) and 2024 (right). Both images were acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8.
Read more at: NASA Earth Observatory
Photo Credit: Wanmei Liang
