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Glaciers: The biggest losers

Date and Time:
Location:
-

1222 Cowles Street
(The 2017 lectures will be held in a new location, the Raven Landing Center, 1222 Cowles Street, across from the Noel Wein Public Library.)

Andy Aschwanden's Photo
Andy Aschwanden
Research Assistant Professor
UAF-GI

It took hundreds of thousands of years to build up the glaciers covering the Earth's poles, slowly turning snow accumulation into ice. With temperatures on the rise everywhere, glaciers in Alaska and around the world are responding to this warming by melting away. Here we will tell the tale of glaciers from their formation when the world was a colder place to their eventual demise if temperatures keep rising. We will learn why glaciers that end in the ocean are particularly vulnerable to higher ocean temperatures and why we care so much about the future of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet even though it is so far from Alaska.