By now, global climate change is on the front pages of newspapers and in the evening news. The impact can even be seen in Olympic National Park. Research by the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group reveals that April 1 snowpack levels in the region have declined about 35 percent over the last 50 years.

Is global warming responsible? Looking back over the past 100 years of data, the snowpack decline in the Northwest is also due to warming, according to Philip Mote, a researcher with the Climate Impacts Group. The declines are greatest mid-slope, near snowline, where warmer temperatures mean more precipitation falls as rain instead of snow. Research on Mount Olympus’ Blue Glacier confirms this. Using data from weather balloons released near Forks, a town on the west side of the Olympic Peninsula, glacier researchers discovered that average January through March temperatures at 4,700 feet (1,450 meters) have increased about 6º F (3.3ºC) since 1948. Precipitation at the snout of the glacier has decreased, and has shifted toward rain rather than snow. That means the Blue Glacier, like glaciers throughout the world, is shrinking. The snout is retreating and the glacier is less thick. Modern instruments revealed the surface of the glacier terminus thinned by about 100 feet in only 10 years between 1987 and 1996!

Link to University of Washington (UW) Blue Glacier site:(www.geophys.washington.edu/Surface/Glaciology/PROJECTS/BLUE_GLAC/blue.html

UW Climate Impacts Group site:  www.cses.washington.edu/cig

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change site:  www.ipcc.ch