As the safety and accessibility of high mountain snow and glacier ice decreases, the biggest loss is data consistency. Via WIREDUK
, researchers are finding it harder to access their favorite research tools. They are having to adjust protocols, safety measures, and scientific models to combat the changing conditions. Data is harder to harvest, while at the same time being less consistent, making it even more difficult to study and understand the world as it changes.
Such sites are located all over glaciers and are often marked with a mass balance stake. These metal stakes—usually tick marked with measurement lines—are inserted at known depths on the glacier. They’re then visited multiple times a year to measure how much ice has accumulated or been lost at these points. But as snow and ice melt, reaching some stakes can become impossible.
Every researcher mentioned having to move their sampling seasons earlier or having to work faster in fewer months because of the longer and warmer summers. Karapetrova has been limited to collecting samples in June and July, when previously scientists could collect all the way into August.
And the data losses are getting larger. A weather station on Gulkana Glacier in the eastern Alaska Range, which has been collecting weather data since the 1960s, will be decommissioned in the next three years. As the glacier has receded, it’s left behind pockets of ice that rocks can slide off of that make accessing the station too problematic and dangerous, ending a consistent weather record that stretches back over half a century.
Working around these data inconsistencies then makes conveying the reality of climate change more difficult. Consistent data is needed to tell a powerful scientific story, and constantly having to change collection sites means recalibrating the record, making it harder to draw strong conclusions, according to McNeil. Every research breakthrough has to come with more qualifiers and explainers. “It just makes your life more difficult,” Pelto says. “And it makes your data a little less quality.