Ancient Snow Patches in Norway Melting at Record Speeds

It turns out that some ancient snow patches which have existed for thousands of years are now melting at record speeds. Scientists have found that glaciers and permanent snow patches in Norway are now vanishing at an astonishing rate.

These snowfields contain ancient artifacts that have, essentially, been frozen in time. They also contain climate data and other details about the past history of Earth. That's why scientists are hurriedly working with these snowfields as they continue to disappear. As the snow patches melt, organic materials in the snow like arrow shafts will quickly decompose and be lost forever.

"Norway has a long tradition of taking measurements of glaciers of varying size, but we know very little about the smallest glaciers and what the locals refer to as snow patches," said Geir Vatne, one of the researchers, in a news release.

A glacier is a perennial mass of moving snow and ice. Snow patches, in contrast, are stationary. The researchers used a laser scanner and snow cores to measure the accumulation of snow patches in the winter and their melt in the summer. The researchers also used GPS technology to measure whether there is movement in snow patches, and took sediment samples from melt water lakes to study how snow patches have varied in size and activity since the ice sheet retreated from the area they were in.

So what did they find? During the hot summer of 2014, the snow patched called Kringsollfonna lost over 10 meters of snow and ice.

"This loss wasn't just the snow from the winter before-it included eight meters of old ice that disappeared," said Geir Vatne, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Our measurements show that now the snow patch is eight meters at its thickest point. With one more hot summer, all of Kringsollfonna could be gone."

The findings reveal that snow patches continue to disappear. This is important not just for researchers uncovering ancient artifacts, but also to the ecosystem; reindeer actually seek out snow patches on hot summer days to avoid insects. In the future, we may very well see what happens when there are no snow patches to relieve the heat of the summer.

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