UN Year for Melting Glaciers

The year 2025 has been designated by the United Nations as the Year of Glaciers' Preservation. Researchers at the Tarfala Research Station of Stockholm University conduct research on glaciers as part of both national and international projects.

The Earth's glaciers are an important part of the climate system and have existed for many long periods in the Earth's history. They form when more snow remains in place than melt away. Shrinking glaciers are an indicator of global warming. That's why it's important to research glaciers and monitor their condition, says Nina Kirchner, professor of glaciology at Stockholm University and director of the Tarfala Research Station.

“Everyone knows that ice melts at zero degrees Celsius. And if it gets too warm, the glaciers will melt!” Nina Kirchner emphasizes.

When Nina Kirchner started studying glaciers, she was a mathematics student in Switzerland. She wanted to use math to study the surrounding glaciers. Eventually, she came to the field expertise.

“I love my job, I love snow and ice!”

The seasons are not what they used to be

Swedish glaciers are about 6 000 - 8 000 years old and have sometimes grown and sometimes shrunk during that time. The trend now is that they are shrinking.

Professor Nina Kirhner. Foto: Lars Kirchner

When the glaciers melt, the waters around them turn greenish turquoise from their sediments. The streams normally turn this color every summer. But the seasons are not what they used to be. Melting can happen earlier and last longer than a few decades ago.

"Recently, this green coloring of the water has been seen very early in the season, and very late. This shows that the glaciers are melting for a much longer part of the year than before. You don't need sophisticated instruments to see that. People who live here can see that things are no longer like they used to be,” says Nina Kirchner.

She notes that there are major changes in the seasons, in terms of both intensity and timing.

"The balance of the larger system has been disrupted by rapid warming and massive glacial melting, which can happen at any time nowadays."

Nina Kirchner says that at the research station they get reports from their Sámi partners, of rain in winter and hard crusty snow that the reindeer can't scrape off to get to the lichens, and of lichens rotting in the moisture from the rain.

"Winter is no longer winter," she says.

What happens when glaciers melt?

Melting glaciers affect animals and plants in the surrounding area. Water flows change and ecosystems downstream from the glacier are affected by the large and rapid transformations. Glaciers also act as water reservoirs, and their disappearance affects water supplies. In Sweden streams disappear, for mountain hikers, plants and animals. Countries with droughts, for example around the Himalayas, depend on the reservoirs for their water supply.

A field assistant is preparing measurements at Tarfalajokk for conducting discharge measurements as routinely done by the Tarfala Research Station. Photo: Karuna Mira Sah

"It is very difficult to speculate exactly what will happen," Nina Kirchner explains, "we have no comparison with previous periods, because there has never before been a period when the glaciers melted so quickly. Society needs to prepare itself," she concludes.

Annual measurements

The first measurements on the Storglaciären glacier at Tarfala were made in 1945. It started as basic research into the relationship between glaciers and climate. The mass balance of the glacier has been measured since then - how much snow is accumulated during the winter and how much that melts away in summer - and how all this is linked to precipitation and temperature changes. Over time, the link between the climate and glacier movement has been established through the annual measurements.

The researchers at Tarfala both work out in the field and with data processing. They also do station maintenance, cleaning, purchasing, etc. Each working day is planned according to the weather conditions of that particular day. There is a lot of safety considerations when your workplace is a glacier. Risk prevention is essential for the research team. They have to avoid falling into crevasses or getting injured.

Working as a glacier scientist

In winter, fieldwork can involve taking a scooter out to Storglaciären, with drilling equipment, probes, measuring instruments, GPSs, to manually measure the thickness of the snow. They also check the so-called ablation stakes, six-meter-long aluminum poles, which were drilled into the ice the previous summer. If the poles are already sticking up above the ice surface, they need to be re-drilled for the following summer. It is important that the poles remain in place, so that future melting can be clearly monitored by measuring how much of the poles protrude from the ice. The measurements are always made at the same locations.

Nina Kirchner på glaciären. Foto: Anders Bergwall.

It is a physically demanding job. But it can also be emotionally stressful when the measurements indicate very rapid melting. Last summer's mass balance measurement on Storglaciären showed so much melting that the research team could not believe the results at first. They triple-checked and then checked a fourth and fifth time. The results were right. The glacier had never melted so much before.

“You need to prepare yourself these days, to see things you don't want to see,” says Nina Kirchner.

Preserve what we can

Glaciers are part of our landscapes, but they are disappearing with global warming.

"The big difference now compared to earlier in geological history is the rapid rate of melting,” explains Nina Kirchner.

Eight out of ten glaciers in Sweden are expected to shrink significantly or disappear completely within 75 years, unless we mitigate climate change. Nina Kirchner sees it as a very important part of her job to convey awareness of what is happening to the glaciers to everyone who cannot go there and see with their own eyes.

“We are already seeing the first examples of glaciers disappearing,” says Nina Kirchner, who hopes that the Glacier Year will raise awareness and incentives to do something about it.

"The melting we are seeing now is greatly accelerated," she stresses, "a glacier that would normally take several hundred years to melt may soon be gone. To preserve what we can, we need to make a shift. It is not possible to preserve glaciers without climate transition."

GLACIER YEAR 2025

The year 2025 has been designated the International Year of Glaciers Preservation and March 21 is declared Glacier Day. Events all over the world marked the day.

The Tarfala Research Station of Stockholm University participated with several activities:

A lecture for the Swedish Mountain Guide Organization, on the theme “Changing glaciers in a warming climate - a science perspective”.
Inauguration of a citizen science project with photos from the so-called E-Stone.

At the "Vetenskapens hus" (House of Science), school classes are invited to meet the university's glacier scientists and listen to lectures.

Learn more about glaciers

There are 277 glaciers in Sweden. Storglaciären at Tarfala is one of Sweden's four reference glaciers, which are included in the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS). The Storglaciären mass balance measurement series is the longest detailed of its kind in the world.

If you want to study glaciology, you can study physical geography, geology, or meteorology, but also mathematics or physics. Study Science-and-mathematics - Stockholm University

You can also learn more about glaciers through the WGMS website. At the US Geological Survey website you can get answers to common questions about glaciers.

Tarfala Research Station holds regular science cafés and open house days.