New Disappearing Glaciers Study

Our peer-reviewed study of Oregon's vanishing glaciers is now out in the Annals of Glaciology and is freely available here or https://bit.ly/49L7ccm and the take home is that more than half of Oregon's 35 named glaciers in the Cascades will have disappeared by 2050 and 29% (10 glaciers) have already ceased to flow and are dead glaciers.

In more detail, we placed Oregon's glaciers into four categories: retreating, critically endangered (will disappear by 2050), almost disappeared (have ceased to flow but still look kind of like a glacier), and disappeared (completely gone or only a little remnant ice left).

In sum, of the 35 glaciers that existed in the 1980s, 10 have ceased to flow and another 8 will cease to flow and will not be glaciers by 2050. These 10 glaciers died because of a warming climate. Since 1980, the Cascades' summers have warmed at about 0.3 Celsius (0.5 Fahrenheit) per decade and 2020-2024 summers were about 1.7 Celsius (3.1 Fahrenheit) warmer than the 1975-1984 mean. There is no trend in winter precipitation.