The U.S. Geological Survey has recently released a Climate Change study about the long term effects of climate change on large glaciers especially in North America. The report stated that there has been rapid shrinkage noted this month and the pace at which it’s taking place has accelerated primarily because of climate change.  Read more about Carbon Tariffs: Eco-Imperialist Green Trade War or Fighting the Very Source of Climate Change?

William Shilts who is a geologist at the university of Illinois spent almost twenty years studying the glaciers located on Bylot Island which is an uninhabited island around 300 miles southwest of Thule in Greenland. He as well as other geologists including students, have recorded the rapid decline in many Bylot glaciers. The photos from the 1940s to the ones that we have presently, clearly show that the glaciers are changing and in particular they are retreating or shrinking.

When geologists take into consideration a course of 4 billion years it’s not hard to see from this unique point of view that climate change today has accelerated. They know by marks on the island that ice ages as well as glacial retreats are common and by that they can measure the damage caused by climate change.

A geologist can actually spot the color of the rock near a glacier that is melting and tell by the pattern of the scars which is on the rock’s surface or its fissures at the edges and the mould of the gravel about the origins and the history of the glacier. They can even tell the age of the glacier by observing these patterns.

According to geologists, glaciers are always perpetually moving, they are flowing yet frozen rivers and like any other river they too collect dirt as well as rocks and then carry them down the stream. So when a glacier is retreating, the mud and the rocks are dumped at the edge forming what is known as moraines. These moraines can at times grow extremely large to the extent that they can inhibit the further advance of the glacier and also cause the ice to thicken sort of like what happens when water fills into the bathtub.

When climate change affects the glacier and it begins to retreat it’s the rocks that tell the real story. When climate change melts the glacier the now newly exposed material becomes a fertile ground for living organisms like lichen which eventually darken the stone. The growth of these organisms can take around half a century to commence. The bare rock inside of the moraine will signal that the glacier has only retreated a few decades back. The light colored moraine which is below the dark rock covered with lichen, Shilts likes to refer to it as a “bathtub ring”.

Shilts took photographs of many of the glaciers since the early 1980’s and later during the 1990’s and geologists have managed to chronicle the changes which have taken place up until today. The photos tell the story of how climate change has slowly but steadily reduced the glaciers. For instance climate change has damaged the Stagnation Glacier the most where it’s covered with a layer of debris and rock and is now much smaller than it was in 1948.