{"id":29,"date":"2012-03-26T19:53:24","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T19:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web62630.aiso.net\/?page_id=29"},"modified":"2022-08-02T09:24:03","modified_gmt":"2022-08-02T09:24:03","slug":"north-american-cordillera","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/sv\/north-american-cordillera\/","title":{"rendered":"Nordamerikanska Kordilj\u00e4rerna"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The North American Cordillera forms the \u201cbackbone\u201d of North America. It is originates in the US state of Alaska, running through western Canada and the western United States, and continuing into Mexico. Although commonly associated with the Rocky Mountains, the North American Cordillera in fact encompasses a number of essentially continuous mountain ranges across western North America.<\/p>\n

Together with the Andes, glaciers in the North American Cordillera show perhaps the most rapid rates of disappearance anywhere.\u00a0Glacier National Park in the U.S. for example has become notorious for the disappearance of the very glaciers that gave the park its name \u2013 the last of which will almost certainly disappear by 2030. When Glacier National Park in the U.S. was created in 1910, it had around 150 glaciers; today, less than 30 remain, and those have shrunk by about two-thirds. In Western Canada, inventories by the University of Northern British Columbia indicates that ice cover has decreased between 11-25%, with rates of decrease from 2000-2005 double those of 1985-2000.<\/p>\n

Severe losses will continue at a steep rate over the next several decades just due to current rates of warming. Even the median IPCC projections see the disappearance of virtually all North American glaciers outside the Arctic Circle by 2100. Any emissions higher than this will eventually result in essentially complete loss of all glaciers in the North American Cordillera. With high emissions (a global mean temperature rise exceeding 4\u00b0C by 2100), any substantial seasonal snowpack also will become a rarity in North America outside the Arctic. With very low emissions, however, glacier losses will slow and eventually stabilize, with at least remnants remaining, and snowpack will gradually return.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n