A hot summer in Alaska

This has been a hot summer in Alaska, and the glaciers show it. Last week I had the opportunity to fly into the Alaska Range and to Black Rapids Glacier. The upper areas were a bit cloudy, but the picture below shows an area that should really be snow covered at the end of the summer.

 

The different bands show areas where not only last winter's snow melted, but successively older snow packs (firn) as well. We have a mass balance model site there, which was traditionally in the accumulation area. No more.

Here are a few more pictures from the flight (all by A. Mahoney):