Climate Change Shrinks Glacier, Re-Routes Meltwater

Scientists have blamed climate change as the reason Canada’s Kaskawulsh Glacier has shrunk dramatically and its meltwater stream is changing direction.As a result of the diversion of flow, the original Slims River, where water from the glacier flowed into, disappeared over four days, The Guardian quoted scientists.The phenomenon, known as “river piracy,” is possibly the first to occur in modern times, geoscientist Dan Shugar told BBC. River piracy is “the diversion of the headwaters of one stream into another one, ” according to a study published in Nature Geoscience on April 17.The study said the meltwater from Kaskawulsh Glacier in Yukon, one of Canada’s largest, used to flow northward toward the Slims River, then the Bering Sea. In spring 2106, a one-mile retreat of the glacier caused the meltwater to re-route, moving southward instead and flowing into the Kaskawulsh River, toward the Gulf of Alaska.The change “abruptly and radically” altered the regional drainage pattern and could have a “profound effect on landscape evolution."This footage of the glacier was filmed in August-September 2016.