While glaciers around the world are shrinking because of global warming, 50 in New Zealand's Southern Alps have been gaining more ice mass over the last three years.
An annual survey by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) using aerial photographs shows the glaciers have reversed a pattern in which they shrunk in four of five years between 1998 and 2002.
But NIWA climate scientist, Jim Salinger, said that while the glaciers were continuing to recover, they were still far from their ice-packed glory of a century ago.
He said the Frank Josef Glacier, in the Westland National Park, which descends about 10km from the main divide in the Alps to about 300m above sea level in temperate rain forest, was still much shorter than in 1900.
And the total volume of ice in the Southern Alps has been reduced by 25 to 30 percent as mean temperatures rose by 0.7oC.
Mark Mellsop, director of Franz Josef Glacier Guides, said the ice was advancing by up to about 1m a day.
"It's pushing a pile of rocks in front of it like a slow-moving bulldozer blade, so you can certainly see evidence of the advance," he told the Press newspaper in Christchurch.
The 14km Fox Glacier is growing about 70cm a day, according to Alpine Guides managing director Mike Browne, who said the advance had been especially noticeable over the last three months of winter.
He said guides had to cut new steps into the ice for guided walking groups regularly because old ones were being moved by the advancing glacier.
Salinger said that last year's gains were caused by heavier snowfalls in the Alps which had caused the seventh-largest increase in ice volumes since NIWA's aerial surveys began in 1977.
The World Glacier Monitoring Service has reported an average annual loss of half a meter in ice thickness since 1980 in monitored glaciers, demonstrating the effects of global warming.
But Salinger said New Zealand glaciers were boosted by extremely high rainfall, with more than 10m a year falling west of the Southern Alps' main divide.
Most glaciers, except for some in parts of Norway, were in areas of lower rainfall and were affected more quickly by rising temperatures.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS