Climate Change Can Tear Down Mountains
November 25, 2015
![The Bering Glacier is one reason why the St. Elias Mountains in Alaska are eroding faster than they are being built. ROBERT SIMMON/NASA; DATA SOURCE: LANDSAT 7 SCIENCE TEAM](https://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/files/sn-iceages-350x219.jpg)
The St. Elias Mountains in Alaska are more than 5000 meters tall, testament to a tectonic plate wedged underneath the region that is driving them up like a snowplow. But the St. Elias range also contains some of the world’s largest glaciers, which inexhaustibly scour the mountains and dump sediment in the sea. Now, a new study finds that the glaciers are winning, eroding the mountains faster than they are being built. Moreover, a jump in the region’s erosion rates about a million years ago coincides with a transition to more powerful ice ages—a sign that climate change can have a larger than expected effect in tearing down mountains.
Science, Nov.23, 2015
The Daily Mail, Nov.24, 2015
Featuring: Sean Gulick, research professor, Institute for Geophysics, Jackson School of Geosciences