Alpine glaciers are growing again here is the reason for a boom season
Bucking the general trend that has lasted for several decades, the budget last hydrological year (from 1 October 2013 to 30 September 2014) is very positive for the glaciers that have really in very good health, continuing, however, a trend that goes on in part from the previous year. To make a decisive contribution was above all an abundance of rainfall, so that the latter is in South Tyrol turns out to be the second season with the largest accumulation of snow in 30 years. Only in hydrological 2000/2001 there was an even higher snow accumulation.This resumption of glaciers is derived from a concatenation of favorable factors: first, last winter (the 2013/2014) has certainly been mild, but the currents from the south / west led snowfall exceptional Southern Alpine Arc. E 'followed a summer extraordinarily fresh and with frequent snowfall out of season, which gave oxygen to the glaciers. The result of all this is found in a positive assessment of changes in glacier mass a little 'everywhere Mass balances negatives were measured only on the glaciers with upper limit at relatively low, as the glacier pendant.
Karakorum glaciers always bucking: continue to advance
The Karakoram mountain range is that which rises to the north-west Himalayas, over the course of the Indus River. A recent study by the US again confirms the fact that these glaciers would be stable or locally advanced in recent years, unlike the global scenario that sees instead the retreat more and more dramatic, worldwide, of these important water reserves sweet.
The research results, published by "Nature Geoscience", were obtained by analyzing all available meteorological data from 1861: it was determined that the Karakorum precipitation falls almost all winter and that means a lot more snow, unlike the middle and south / east of the mountain range that receives more precipitation in summer, linked to monsoon.
As part of a study published recently in the journal Nature Geoscience, a team of French researchers presented data collected from satellite measurements that demonstrate unequivocally a slight but steady increase in the volume of glaciers in the Karakoram region, the heart of the Himalayas. In a planet marked by global warming, where ice caps and glaciers seem to be all in retreat, especially in the last thirty years, makes sense the existence of a region in contrast. The Karakoram is dominated by glaciers sometimes kilometers stretching beneath rare famous peaks (such as K2) and an array of mountains that has not even been given a name.DIFFERENCES BETWEEN 2000 AND 2008 - The French scientists have focused the height differences Trai data provided by radiometers aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2000 and a more recent French satellite SPOT5 in 2008. The comparison of the data, suitably adapted, put showed an increase in ice thickness equal to 11 cm. The area studied by the researchers is just equal to a quarter of the region of the Karakorum, but the data are sufficient results to researchers to mark this positive balance, with the glaciers that, unlike much of the planet, should not be at a loss. The impact of the glaciers of the Karakorum forecasts of sea level rise is not negligible, since there are nearly 20,000 square kilometers of glaciers, or about 3% of the ice out of the Arctic and the Antarctic continent.POSSIBLE CAUSES - There seems for the time being premature to totally for granted this positive trend, in a context of time so small (just 8 years). However, the mystery of the anomaly remains of Karakorum and not by the way so easy to see the reasons for this deviation from the global trend. It seems that the reasons are still related to a relative cooling that would have affected these geographical areas in recent decades, one of the few exceptions than the rest of which is heated instead. Furthermore, the data of local weather stations corroborate this hypothesis because it confirmed an increase in winter precipitation, while the streams that originate from the glaciers have not increased their scope, but rather decreased. Sursa-MeteoGiornale.
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