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For more than ten years, residents of the capital of Alaska have endured recurrent eruptions from glacier dams like the one that outburst at least two homes over the weekend.
The most recent flood, however, caught everyone off guard because of how swiftly the water rushed as the raging Mendenhall River consumed riverbanks, undermined and damaged buildings, and forced some locals to escape.
The Suicide Basin, a side basin of the magnificent but vanishing Mendenhall Glacier, is where the water originated from.
During the spring and summer, the glacier serves as a barrier to contain precipitation and melt that accumulates in the basin from the adjacent Suicide Glacier.
The water eventually bursts through the Mendenhall Glacier, enters Mendenhall Lake, and flows into the Mendenhall River.
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Global Warming Melting Glaciers in Alaska
According to Eran Hood, an environmental science professor at the University of Alaska Southeast, such glacier dam outbursts have been happening in the region since 2011, but frequently the water spills more gradually, typically over a few days.
Juneau, Alaska, which has a population of around 30,000, many residences, and well-known hiking trails close to the flowing Mendenhall River, experienced record-breaking lake and streamflow levels during Saturday’s storm. Glaciers are melting due to global warming.
A research published this year predicted major melting by the end of the century due to current climate change patterns, and another study revealed that glaciers in some sections of the Himalayas are melting at previously unheard-of speeds.
However, scientists think there is a complex link between the Juneau flood and the world’s shifting climate.
Suicide Glacier, which once provided ice to the Mendenhall Glacier, previously covered the basin where the rain and meltwater are now gathered.
Climate drives the phenomenon, but individual floods are unrelated to climate because they are essentially just instances of water flooding a basin in the summer and then draining at some time.
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Source: abcnews.go.com
