‘This is a big deal': Mighty glacier finally succumbs to climate change

Massachusetts: One of the world's thickest mountain glaciers is finally succumbing to global warming, a new analysis reports.

An aerial view of Alaska's Taku glacier near Juneau.

The Taku Glacier, located north of Juneau, Alaska, has started to retreat as temperatures rise, said Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College in Massachusetts.

Up until now, of the 250 glaciers that he has studied, all had retreated except one: Taku Glacier.But an analysis shows that Taku has lost mass and joined the rest of the retreating glaciers.

"This is a big deal for me because I had this one glacier I could hold on to," Pelto told NASA's Earth Observatory. "But not anymore. This makes the score climate change: 250, and alpine glaciers: 0."

Read the story from The Age by Doyle Rice - “‘This is a big deal': Mighty glacier finally succumbs to climate change.”