Climate Change Research, Science 7

Most of the world’s glaciers are found near the poles, but glaciers exist on all of the world’s continents, even Africa. Australia does not have any glaciers; however, it is considered part of Oceania, which includes several Pacific island chains and the large islands of Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. Both of these countries have glaciers.

Due to sheer mass, glaciers flow like very slow rivers. Some glaciers are as small as football fields, while others grow to be dozens or even hundreds of kilometers long.

Ice has been a major force in the Glacier Bay region for at least the last seven million years. The glaciers seen here today are remnants of a general ice advance – the Little Ice Age – that began about 4,000 years ago. True to its name, this advance in no way approached the extent of continental glaciation during Pleistocene times known as the Wisconsin Ice Age. The Little Ice Age reached its maximum extent here about 1750, when general melting began.

Glacier National Park’s eponymous ice sheets lost more than a third of their area between 1966 and 2015. See how every glacier in the park has retreated over 50 years.