We just returned from a trip to the Rockies, and spent several days in the Rocky Mountain National Park, hiking, watching wildlife, and simply enjoying the majestic scenery of these western mountains. A million years ago, these mountains were covered with glacial ice, and the erosion caused by the ice created many “glacial-features.” One for example is a large valley that was “carved” out by the action of water and ice, in Moraine Park, as seen below.

Here is another picture that shows some of the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies off in the distance. Most of the snow you see will last through the summer. But much of it melts each year providing the west with much of their water.

The glacial age came to an end in the U.S. about 10,000 years ago when the ice retreated from Ohio, and continued retreating to the distribution of glacial ice as seen on maps in the 20th century.

But there are some places on Earth in which glacial ice is a prominent part of the landscape, and has been for a couple of million years. In her new book, Field Notes from a Catastophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, Elizabeth Kolbert approaches the problem of global warming from many angles–temperature increases, floating houses in Denmark, the “new” ranges of butterflies, the increasing retreat of glaciers.

In Iceland, scientists and citizens through the Icelandic Glaciological Society have been monitoring the many glaciers that have been on Iceland for perhaps the last 2 million years. According to Kolbert, the society was founded in 1930, and made up mostly of farmers who would pace off the distance to the edge of a glacier. They kept up the measurements every year, and it seemed each person involved had his or her own glacier to monitor. Although Iceland’s glaciers were growing in the 1970s and 1980s (in the North America, they were shrinking), they started to contract in the mid-1990s.

For example, the glacier shown in the map below (Myrdalsjokull glacier), receded 10 feet in 1996, 33 feet in 1997, and 98 feet in 1998. In 2003 it shrank by 302 feet, and 2004, 285 feet. As the glacial watchers said, the glacier has retreated more than 1,100 feet in 10 years. And this is happening to all of the glaciers on Iceland.

If you live in Iceland people can tell what the climate is doing by the activity of glaciers. Now, glaciers are getting smaller and smaller, some warn that the only ice that will be left will on the tops of the mountains.

If you live in New England, you know that the climate is changing. For the past two years the greatest floods in New England’s history have occured. In the midwest, there is the fear that over the next several years a severe drought will hit, as it has already affected western areas such as Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. The climate is changing. In Kolberts book, she presents the evidence from many points of view that Earth is warming, and its probably due to the buildup of carbon dioxide. I recommend the book. It would be the basis (content—you’ll need to develop the activities) of a very powerful teaching unit for middle and/or high school students.