Mauri S. Pelto is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

of environmental science at

Nichols College Nichols College is a Private college, private business college in Dudley, Massachusetts. Founded in 1931 as Nichols Junior College, Nichols College offers both bachelor's and master's degrees, as well as certificate programs. History Nichol ...

Dudley, Massachusetts Dudley is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 11,921 at the 2020 census. History Dudley was first settled in 1714 and was officially incorporated in 1732. The town was named for landholders Paul and Wil ...

and director of the North Cascades Glacier Climate Project.

Work

Mauri Pelto has been studying the glaciers in the

North Cascades The North Cascades are a section of the Cascade Range of western North America. They span the border between the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and ...

located in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Washington Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...

since 1984. Pelto's research team has recorded the

mass balance In physics, a mass balance, also called a material balance, is an application of conservation of mass to the analysis of physical systems. By accounting for material entering and leaving a system, mass flows can be identified which might have ...

of numerous glaciers, all of which are retreating due to

global warming Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...

, which has raised temperatures and decreased the amount of snowfall in the

accumulation zone On a glacier, the accumulation zone is the area above the firn line, where snowfall accumulates and exceeds the losses from ablation, ( melting, evaporation, and sublimation). The annual equilibrium line separates the accumulation and ablation ...

of the North Cascade glaciers. More recently, Pelto has used

Landsat The Landsat program is the longest-running enterprise for acquisition of satellite imagery of Earth. It is a joint NASA / USGS program. On 23 July 1972, the Earth Resources Technology Satellite was launched. This was eventually renamed to Lan ...

imagery from the past and compared it to more recent imagery to make comparisons between the extent of glacial coverage over periods spanning decades. Pelto has stated that of the 756 glaciers that were identified in the North Cascades by the

U.S. Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on March ...

in 1971, 53 of them had disappeared completely by 2006. Another nine are also expected to disappear if current climate patterns continue. In addition, three glaciers in particular pose economic and environmental risks if they retreat much further.

References

American glaciologists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{Glaciologist-stub