The landscape of Mount Baker, Washington's third-highest peak, is undergoing a dramatic transformation, with its glaciers retreating at unprecedented rates that echo a global pattern of accelerated ice loss.
Recent satellite imagery released by NASA's Earth Observatory and ground observations reveal how human-induced climate change is reshaping this iconic Washington peak faster than at any time in recent history.
"These glaciers have advanced and retreated quite a few times in the past 5,000 years," glaciologist Mauri Pelto said in a statement. "It's not just one progression backwards."
Yet the changes he's witnessing today are far from typical.
Pelto would know. For 41 years, he's led the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project, documenting the ebb and flow of these ancient ice formations. His research shows that while glacier movement has always been dynamic, the current retreat is extraordinary in its pace and scale.
The evidence is stark. Comparing NASA Landsat images from 1990 and 2024 shows a dramatic reduction in the glacier's extent. Areas once blanketed in thick ice are now bare rock. A boulder where Pelto once sat to attach his crampons in 1990 now stands 2,000 feet downhill from the glacier's current edge.
The retreat has accelerated markedly in recent years. From 1990 to 2015, the Easton Glacier retreated at a relatively modest pace of 30 to 40 feet per year. But in the last decade, that rate has more than doubled to 100 feet annually.
Even more alarming, in just the past two years, the glacier has pulled back 450 feet—the fastest retreat rate ever recorded at this site.
This rapid change isn't isolated to Mount Baker. "2023 was the first year that every reference glacier in the world lost mass," Pelto said.
Of the 250 glaciers he has studied worldwide, 25 have already vanished completely. The pattern is consistent across continents, from New Zealand to Tibet to the North Cascades.
The implications extend beyond mere measurements. These glaciers serve as reference points in a global network of 45 carefully monitored ice formations, each with over three decades of continuous data. Their collective decline tells a story of unprecedented global warming, with the rate of ice loss accelerating beyond anything previously recorded.
"It's in the last three years that it's really roared backwards," Pelto said, pointing to newly exposed rock faces. The glacier isn't just retreating—it's also thinning rapidly, losing about six feet of ice thickness each summer since 2021.
While glacial advance and retreat have been a natural cycle since the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago, the current pattern is different. The changes observed today far exceed the normal variations seen during events like the "Little Ice Age" of the 1850s when regional cooling caused many North American and European glaciers to expand.
Pelto added, "The glaciers are telling us—they're struggling with the temperatures they're experiencing, and they're disappearing."
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