North Cascade Glacier Climate Project

06/26/2025

Substantial Article on "Mount Rainier’s glaciers are disappearing. What happens when they’re gone?" features research I completed on the vanished Van Trump and Pyramid Glacier and art from Jill Pelto
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Several of Mount Rainier’s glaciers are already gone, experts say, and others aren’t far behind. The News Tribune asked what that means for visitors.

09/21/2024

NASA Earth Observatory in an article this week has focussed on our North Cascade Glacier Climate Project work over the last four decades. From the beginning in 1984 we focussed on using a synergistic combination of field observations of snow depth, glacier melt, glacier runoff, glacier surface mapping and crevasse characteristics, with Landsat images documenting snow cover extent evolution during the melt season and glacier area change. This 41 year collaboration between ground truth observations and Landsat images was enhanced a decade ago when the images became readily available at no cost. We focus on using art and data to tell the story of glacier change this year led by Jill Pelto, with Emma Mary Murray, Cal Waichler and Shari Macy. I am on the science alliance team and Jill Pelto a creative alliance team member for Protect Our Winters, which provided support this year for our "What Happens when a glacier disappears, from the glacier to the sea" project.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/153337/keeping-tabs-on-north-cascades-glaciers

12/09/2023

Excellent examination of who we are, what we do, why we have been doing this glacier research in the North Cascade Range for 40 years by Jenna Travers

Forty years after Mauri Pelto began studying the glaciers in northern Washington, much has changed about the glaciers, the project and the people involved.

08/26/2023

Our 2023 observations featured in Seattletimes article today.

An annual survey in the Cascades finds that after thousands of years of ice, there's only one functional glacier left in King County, still flowing toward Puget Sound.

07/28/2023

On July 30, 2023 the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project begin our 40th year of field research documenting the glacier response to climate change. During this period we have observed a number of glaciers disappear Hinman, Lewis, Lyall, Milk Lake and Spider. These glaciers have been losing ~1% of their volume each year. Beginning in 2006 this backpack science program incorporated artists annually. The projects continues to be a joint expedition of artists. Beginning in 2014 forest fire smoke has been a consistent issue along with frequent heat waves. This has accelerated glacier losses. Here is a look back.

02/01/2023

Our esearch on the loss of Hinman Glacier discussed in Podcast by Kim Shepard.

‎News · 2023

01/28/2023

We have observed the diminishing Hinman Glacier from 1984-2022. It is no longer a glacier. Not the first glacier we saw disappear, but the largest. KUOW Public Radio reports on our observations. We will continue observation on nearby Lynch Glacier again this summer.

The largest glacier between the high peaks of Mount Rainier and Glacier Peak has melted away after a long battle with global warming.

10/09/2022

Lyman Glacier retreat from1890-2022. The glacier has lost half of its area since 1979.

Lyman Glacier Lyman Glacier Continues To Melt Away 1921-2022 Lyman Glacier which feeds into Lyman Lake and then Railroad Creek in the Lake Chelan drainage of the North Cascade Range, Washington has retreated a total of 1330 m from the 1890 moraine. In 1929 year the terminus position was mapped by th...

11/05/2021

04/11/2020

A visual look at a day of glacier field work assessing mass balance on the Rainbow Glacier, Mount Baker in the North Cascade Range Washington with the North Cascade…

04/11/2020

What a day of glacier fieldwork looks like, Rainbow Glacier on Mount Baker 8-7-2018.

A visual look at a day of glacier field work assessing mass balance on the Rainbow Glacier, Mount Baker in the North Cascade Range Washington with the North Cascade…