ISSN 0019–1043 Ice News Bulletin of the International Glaciological Society Number 151 3rd Issue 2009 Contents 2 From the Editor 40 International Glaciological Society 3 Recent work 40 Journal of Glaciology 3 Italy 41 Annals of Glaciology, Volume 51(54) 3 Alpine glaciers 41 Annals of Glaciology, Volume 51(55) 14 Ice cores 42 Report from the Nordic Branch Meeting 16 Alpine inventories 43 Notes from the production team 17 Apennine glaciers 44 Meetings of other societies: 18 Tropical glaciers 44 Northwestern Glaciologists meeting 18 Himalaya–Karakoram glaciers 2009 20 Polar glaciers and ice sheets 47 Sapporo symposium 2nd circular 23 Glacier hydrology 52 Ohio symposium 2nd circular 24 The Miage Lake project 57 Future meetings of other societies: 25 Applied glaciology 11th International Circumpolar 28 Remote sensing Remote Sensing Symposium 30 Permafrost 57 Books received 33 Ice caves 58 News 33 Ecological studies 58 Obituary: Hans Röthlisberger 37 Snow and avalanches 60 Glaciological diary 66 New members Cover picture: River Skeiðará flowing along the terminus of the outlet glacier Skeiðarárjökull from southern Vatnajökull ice cap. The river changed course in July 2009. Until then the river flowed directly to the south from the outlet on the eastern side of the terminus and under the longest bridge in Iceland, the ~900 m long Skeiðará bridge. The river now flows to the west along the terminus and merges with the river Gígjukvísl near the centre of the glacier and the Skeiðará bridge is more or less on dry land. Photo: Oddur Sigurðsson. Scanning electron micrograph of the ice crystal used in headings by kind permission of William P. Wergin, Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture EXCLUSION CLAUSE. While care is taken to provide accurate accounts and information in this Newsletter, neither the editor nor the International Glaciological Society undertakes any liability for omissions or errors. 1 From the Editor Dear IGS member We have now had the opportunity to test our The online submission system was a little two new digital systems. The online member- later getting off the ground than I had hoped, ship payment has worked very well, and you as the online membership took up much more have responded very well – but there are still of our time than anticipated. But that did not some stragglers out there. As I mentioned in deter you from submitting as we had a record my last editorial in ICE 150, it is much more number of submissions in January. It is really economical for us to send out as many of the interesting and enjoyable for us to report that Journals as possible when we print them. We 2009 was yet another record-breaking year as sent out the second reminder in March which regards the number of submissions. And that is brought on another flurry of renewals. We will the fourth year in a row that we have broken the now target those who have been members of submission record. With the online submission the IGS in the past but for whatever reason system we anticipate that we will make that five have not renewed. If you know of anyone like years in a row. that, please encourage them to rejoin. We are As we are now publishing six issues per constantly trying to think of things that will year we decided to go back to the tradition make IGS membership more attractive: the lat- of having a new cover photograph on each est is that we are making back issues of all IGS issue. That means we are going to need a publications available online. That means that steady stream of high-quality pictures. So volume 1, issue 1 of the Journal is now online please look at your photo album and check to and so is volume 1 of the Annals. So please help see if you have any stunning pictures in your us in getting former members back. collection. This applies especially to authors Quite a few of you have come back to whose papers we are going to publish, as we us with suggestions as to how we can further would like the cover to illuminate an article improve the system. In particular you have in the issue. So if your paper is accepted for mentioned that you would like to be able to publication, please check to see if you have a purchase back issues of both the Annals and potential cover photograph that is relevant to Journal at the same time as you renew. That is the subject of your article. of course our intention but we decided to take it On a similar note, some of you may have one step at the time. We will introduce a ‘shop’ noticed that the last issue of 2010 is going where you will be able to put other IGS publi- to be the 200th issue of the Journal of Glaci­ cations into a ‘shopping basket’, just like you ology. We are planning to commemorate this do when you shop at any other online vendor. by republishing some classic papers that have You have also asked us to enable you to change appeared in the Journal. In addition we are your type of membership, i.e. from ‘student’ to going to invite our members to submit poten- ‘ordinary’ or ‘ordinary’ to ‘contributing’. That is tial cover pictures to celebrate this milestone. something we will be working on and hopefully So start looking at your slides and send us a it will be up and running later this year. You sample. Remember that the picture must be also asked whether you could print out receipts of a very high quality. As a prize for the win- once you have paid your membership dues. ning photograph, we will present you with That is also in the pipeline. This online presence a framed picture of the cover and one year’s opens up all sorts of possibilities for the future. free subscription to the Journal. Magnús Már Magnússon Secretary General 2 Recent work Italy ALPINE GLACIERS ian glaciers were inserted. The glaciers entered in GLAD were surveyed with variable continuity Glacier variations, long term length and mass bal­ between 1908 and 2002. Since the time series for ance monitoring most of the 883 glaciers are short or very discon- Long term monitoring of length changes tinuous, a representative subset of 95 glaciers fea- Comitato Glaciologico Italiano (CGI), Carlo turing longer and more reliable data was selected Baroni (UNIPI-DST), Mirco Meneghel (UNIPD- for further analysis. DG), Giovanni Mortara (CNR-IRPI) This subset contains a total of 3776 field- Since the beginning of the last century the CGI surveyed measurements, with an average record has been paying attention to the fluctuations of length of 39.7 years per glacier, ten glaciers in the Italian glaciers. Actually a yearly monitoring of the 60- to 70-year class of record length, four glaciers snout position on selected glaciers is carried out surveyed for more than 70 years and one glacier by the surveyors of the CGI in close cooperation (i.e., Ventina) with records covering 85 years. with several organizations involved in glaciology Glaciers known to surge (i.e., Belvedere) or af- (among others SMI, SGL, CGT-SAT, SG-CAIAA). fected by active calving at the terminus (i.e. Sab- The present (last 15 years) monitoring program bione Meridionale) were excluded. Because of was also sustained by recent COFIN-PRIN Projects this, it is not possible simply to average the curves funded by the Italian Research Ministry. of cumulated terminus fluctuations, and for inter- The collected data are published annually in a comparison purposes, the 95 selected glaciers report in the CGI official journal named ‘Geografia were sorted according to their maximum length Fisica e Dinamica Quaternaria’. Moreover data of (<1 km, 1–2 km, 2–4 km and >4 km) and the data many glaciers are also periodically sent to WGMS were averaged over time intervals of 10 years to be published in the volumes ‘Fluctuations of (from 1913 to 2002). Glaciers’. Snout position is commonly measured The results show that the general trend for Ital- on the ground by topographic instruments (mainly ian glaciers, in spite of the fact that such glaciers tape, in some cases laser rangefinder, GPS). A de- show strong fluctuations with large amplitudes, is scription of the year by year glacier changes is usu- one of retreat for most of the 20th century. The only ally given along with the measurements. For some significant interruptions in the retreat trend proved glaciers these measurements have been collected to have taken place in the 1913–1922 interval since the end of the XIX century thus making their (though very few glaciers were monitored during data-records more than 100 years old. Over the those wartime years) and then in the 1970s and last ten years 134 glaciers (average value) have 1980s. The lowest fraction of retreating glaciers been monitored in the Italian Alps (66 glaciers in and the lowest rates of retreat or even significant the Western Alps, 25 in the Central Alps and 43 advances were recorded in the decade from 1973 in the Eastern Alps). About 88% (average value) to 1982, compared to the preceding and subse- of the glaciers measured are retreating (from 69% quent decades, regardless of glacier size. However, in 2001 to a maximum of 99% in 2007); some of a consistent pattern was recognizable with respect them are now vanishing. to glacier size, both in the percentage of retreating Contact: [email protected] glaciers and in the average rate of terminus fluctua- tion within the 1973–1982 decade itself: while the A century of Italian glaciers fluctuations longest glaciers (i.e.