What Colorado’s disappearing glaciers are telling us

One of the defining challenges of climate change is that its progress can be so gradual, you don’t notice it happening. But Colorado’s glaciers may be an exception. As of September, St. Mary’s Glacier, a popular site for campers and visitors, has vanished, at least for now. Not technically a glacier, but a year-round snowfield, St. Mary’s melted this year for the first time in recorded history.

The 13 remaining majestic glaciers of northern Colorado also are melting away at a precipitous rate. And that means they are providing a rare, real-time insight into the impact of global warming.

“These glaciers are the canary in the coal mine,” said Tom Bellinger, affiliate professor of Environmental Science in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Because of their outlier status and limited size, he said, we can measurably see them disappear year after year.

It turns out their rate of decline may be even more rapid than previously feared. A major new scientific report has found that Earth lost more than 12 trillion tons of ice from glaciers in polar regions in just the past 47 years.

The international study — headed by the European Space Agency and incorporating NASA satellite technology — also shows that ice sheets have been melting at a significantly higher volume since the turn of the century, and especially in the past 15 years.

Such a massive-scale glacial ice melt is not only a global problem — it carries specific implications for Colorado.

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“Looking ahead, this crisis will take a lot of water that we’ve depended on for centuries to feed our cities and irrigation systems, as well as those industries that depend on glacier-fed valleys and rivers,” Bellinger said.

“It will also affect our state’s fisheries and wildlife habitats, as rivers dry up earlier in the summertime,” he added. “And it will certainly hit recreational businesses, such as ski resorts, which are already struggling.”

The diminished glaciers, along with a 27-year megadrought, ongoing emergency water shortage on the Colorado River and this year’s record-low snowpack, underline how severely global warming is hitting the Centennial State. “As things dry out in Colorado,” Bellinger said, “we’re seeing more extreme droughts and dust storms, which then impact further on the glaciers and compound the problem.”

Bellinger has monitored the retreat of Colorado’s glaciers for a long time, but even he is alarmed by how quickly they have shrunk in recent years. It seems likely that these historic landmarks, part of Colorado’s natural ecology, do not have much time left.

“He said more of the smaller glaciers probably will be gone in 10 to 20 years, “while the larger ones might last for another 40 years. By 2080, it’s forecast that most or even all of the glaciers in Colorado will no longer be there.”

Following the release of the new report, one scientist lamented that we are now a “society smart enough to know the future, but not prudent enough to act upon the knowledge.” Bellinger reluctantly agrees.

“Unfortunately, my sense is that we will not act until we reach more of a crisis point — by which point it might be too little, too late,” he said.

Across the planet, he pointed out, numerous countries, cities and industries are still using fossil fuels to propel their growth rather than considering renewable energy. If such trends continue, the global situation will only get worse.

“Even if we could shut off all fossil fuel-use today, the effects from the damage we’ve already incurred would still continue to warm the planet for decades,” he said. “That’s baked in, literally.”

Against such a grim outlook, Bellinger argues that we urgently need to stabilize or reverse the damage because once the water cycle is disrupted, we will all suffer. “These disappearing glaciers are a bright, flashing warning sign,” he said, “and it’s high time we all took notice.”