1959 Message in a Bottle Predicted Arctic Glacier Melt

by Robert Wilkinson

From Antarctic ice shelf collapse to Arctic glacier melt! Last Summer a team of scientists were at Canada’s Arctic Ward Hunt Island, and found a bottle with a message left by a scientist in 1959 with information and instructions anticipating the retreat of the Arctic glaciers since then.

We read in this remarkable CBC story from a few weeks ago titled 1959 message in a bottle a clue to glacier melt that “the note was signed by Paul T. Walker, an American geologist who’d been on the site in July 10, 1959. It left detailed instructions asking whoever found it to measure the distance between another cairn and the glacier. In 1959, the distance between the cairn and the glacier was 1.2 metres. This summer it was 101.5 metres.”

An expert in the field states ‘it took foresight to leave the note to measure how far the glacier had moved.’

’You weren't going to get any proposals funded to study deglaciation in the 1950s, so if anything, most scientists would think their cairn and their message in a bottle would be overridden by the advance of the glacier, not a marker for retreat.’”

It turns out Paul Walker died a few months later from a brain seizure. I guess he fulfilled his mission on Earth in a very unique way. If the glacier being measured has retreated 100 meters in 55 years, it clearly indicates an extreme rate of melt. 6 feet a year is extraordinarily fast from a geologic way of measuring time!!

I also found a great web page at SkepticalScience that reconstructs the extent of Arctic sea ice over the past 1500 years. It’s extremely clear that the rate of reduction of sea ice over the years is astonishing. And alarming. By all means, go over and take a look at the animated charts!

Arctic Sea Ice Recovers to 6th Lowest Extent in Millennia

For future reference by visitors to this article: Planet Earth in 2014 and Beyond - Antarctica is Melting, Melting, Melting

Copyright © 2014 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[daniel]

have a look at this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25743806

[Robert]

Hi Daniel - Very important article. I just cross posted it over at FB. If we do go into another Maunder Minimum, then I suppose all the heat trapped in the oceans will be a good thing for us, since eventually it will be released, even though it also seems that if history is a precedent, Europe will enter another mini Ice Age.

[Mike]

Hi Robert,

The letter appears to say:
"The distance from the cairn to the glacier edge about 4 ft. from the rock floor is 168.3 ft."

That's about 51.3 meters according to my interpretation of the sentence.

Regards,
Mike

[Robert]

Hi Mike - After examining the original note, it's ambiguous. It seems from just before the 168 ft. sentence he says something about 48 inches, which is about 1.3 meters. So I could go with what you found. But then, how can he have measured the gap so precisely at that time? I find it difficult he could have somehow come up with 168.3 feet. That pretty precise for so wide a gap (over half a football field!) There is probably a lot more to be discovered by contacting the scientists who found the bottle!

[Sara]

So Robert, what do you suggest we do about this? Besides moving inland? And trying to leave a smaller footprint and use as little fossil fuel as we can? It's scary, but I am interested in your advice in response to the coming changes.