While in the Neacola Mountains of Alaska last month, we flew over Shamrock Glacier. This first image is from the head of the glacier, where crevasses have been filled in with snow during the accumulation season.
Farther down the north-flowing glacier, we see the merging of the east and west branches and a fine example of a medial moraine. However, also note on the far lower-right the recently exposed rock. This part of the glacier is shrinking in size, becoming a narrower ice stream.
The toe of Shamrock Glacier is just plain beautiful, ending at a small lake that is dammed from two larger lakes by a ring of moraines. Estimates in a blog post by Mauri Pelto are that the glacier extended all the way out to that moraine as recently as 1950.
In fact, back in 2015, Mauri showed a Landsat satellite image showing the retreat of Shamrock Glacier away from its moraine from 1987 to 2014. Updating this with the most recent July 2019 imagery, you can see the continued retreat of Shamrock Glacier just in the past four years. A big section on the left has calved off, and the glacier has slipped off a rise on the right.
Finally, taking a view from the ground, we can better see how the glacier has not only retreated back, but also thinned and narrowed over the past few years. (The 2015 line is based on a photo from Jerry Pillarelli It’s still a pretty glacier, and the sound of calving icebergs while eating lunch is always welcome. However, it won’t be long before it retreats upslope sufficiently to no longer calve off into the lake.
