UNBC researcher Brian Menounos has been working to improve the understanding of global glacier loss and its effects on the climate.
The chief scientist at the Hakai Institute Airborne Coastal Observatory is seconded as a research scientist with Natural Resources Canada.
Menounos is also part of an international team that has measured and assessed how much mass glaciers across Canada and the world have lost over the years.
His findings have been published in Nature and paint a picture of the effects of climate change.
“Earth's glaciers collectively lost about 273 gigatons of water,” said Menounos. “So, what is a gigaton? It's a cubic kilometre. One way to visualize that is to imagine all of Vancouver Island, which is about 32,000 square kilometres. If you distribute that 273 cubic kilometres of water over 23 years, you get about 20 centimetres of water. Simply put, take all of the mass lost from glaciers over the 23 years and distribute it over Vancouver Island. You’d have a depth of about 20 centimetres.”
Menounos has also contributed to the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE), a community effort by researchers worldwide to reconcile measurements collected from different observation methods. Unfortunately, GlaMBIE’s findings have shown a net loss in glacier mass.
“Some of the earliest measurements were made by field visits to glaciers,” he said. “There, we measured both the accumulation of water at the end of winter and the amount of water lost in the summer. We add those two terms together, and that’s what’s called the net mass balance. Think of it like a bank account: If you deposit $500 and withdraw $200 at the end of the day, you have a healthy balance because you still have $300. But like a glacier in a bad climate, if you deposit $500 and withdraw $700, you have a loss. That’s what glaciers are experiencing.”
Since Canada is home to a quarter of the world’s glaciers, the effects of this mass loss may be closer to home than we expect. Menounos's studies have shown that Western Canada, in particular, has seen increased losses over the years.
“When we look at glaciers closer to Prince George and to the south in the interior, those glaciers have lost something like 23 per cent of their total volume over the last 23 years,” he said. “That’s about one per cent per year. Now what we’re finding is that the rate of loss has really accelerated. It’s a large number because the total volume of ice is quite small relative to other areas, such as Alaska and the Eastern Canadian Arctic.”
Menounos told The Citizen that this research can help predict what glaciers will look like in the future.
He also said that his research is critically important for collecting day-to-day weather observations and year-to-year climate data. His research also assesses the possible impacts of this loss on marine and terrestrial ecosystems and sea-level rise.
