Norway Glaciers Show Surprisingly Small Retreat During 2020…”Nigardsbreen Glacier Actually Grew”
By
P Gosselin on 18. October 2020
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As the globe has warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age, alarms concerning retreating glaciers have been sounded worldwide. The reason for the warming remains hotly disputed: alarmists blame it on manmade CO2 while skeptics say natural factors are just as much at play, if not more so.
Image: Norwegian glace, for illustration purpose. Source: NASA/John Sonntag,
public domain.
Very little retreat in Norway this past summer
Yesterday
Norwegian NRK here reported “several of the largest glaciers have almost not shrunk” during this past summer.
“This year, several places in the country have almost not shrunk,” according to the Norwegian
NVE.
Since 1962 experts have been monitoring the Nigardsbreen glacier, an arm of Jostedalsbreen located in Vestland county. The summer of 2020 has seen the sixth slowest result in about half a century. “If we get more such summers to come, then the glacier front will grow forward again,” says Even Loe in Statkraft.
“The glacier is named after the farm Nigard, which was crushed by the glacier in 1748. At that time the front of the glacier stopped about 4.5 km further ahead than it is today,” reports the
NRK.
Experts attribute this past summer’s stagnation to “a good winter with a lot of snow.”
“The Nigardsbreen glacier has actually grown bigger.”
Glaciologist Hallgeir Elvehøywhich said the glacier retreated 4 meters, “something that is very small compared to previous ones.”
“The trend is largely the same elsewhere in the country,” he says.
Although many glaciers have decreased relatively little this year, the Norwegian experts still remain pessimistic about their future, should warming continue as the models project. “But in all the gloom, there is also a small glimmer of light, should the rainfall continue.”
“There is nothing in the way that the climate system can give us several years with so much snow, and then it will have an effect.”
