Rock glaciers across the United States predominantly accelerate coincident with rise in air temperatures.

ABSTRACT: Despite their extensive global presence and the importance of variations in their speed as an essential climate variable, only about a dozen global time series document long-term changes in the velocity of rock glaciers - large tongue-shaped flows of frozen mountain debris. By analysing historical aerial photographs, we reconstruct here 16 new time series, a type of data that has not previously existed for the North American continent. We observe substantial accelerations, as much as 2-3 fold, in the surface displacement rates of rock glaciers across the mountains of the western contiguous United States over the past six to seven decades, most consistent with strongly increasing air temperatures in that region. Variations between individual time series suggest that different local and inte

SUBMITTER: Kaab A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11365947 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature