Mendenhall Indicator

Mendenhall Glacier is magnificent. Located about 10 miles outside of Juneau, it is the outlet for the massive Juneau Ice Field. It is a very popular tourist destination - for watching brown bears fish, hiking, excursions onto the glacier and/or into ice caves beneath, flights over the entire ice field, and weddings on a patio with the glacier in the background. In addition, it is an index for Global Warming and the associated Global Atmospheric Change.

Evidence indicates that the face of glacier has retreated about two and a half miles since 1500. Seventy percent of the retreat has occurred in the last 70 years. Moreover, the rate of the retreat has been increasing. For example, it was about 70 ft/yr in the early 1970s, increasing to about 90 ft/yr by the early 1990s, and now to about 250 ft/yr in recent years. The increase in the retreat has corresponded to increases in global warming gases (e.g., carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor) in the atmosphere originating from the spread and growth of industrialization around the world and the burning of fossil fuels. A Huff Post internet page shows a time laps of an 1,800 ft retreat since 2007 when we visited and took the photo above (scaned from a photo taken with a Canon AE-1).

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alaska-mendenhall-glacier-time-lapse_n_5668c19be4b009377b23c915