In Norway, Glaciers Are Growing Bigger

Glaciers in Norway have started to creep down from their mountain strongholds--growing bigger in apparent defiance of global warming.

One wall of ice, reclaiming ground uncovered for years, is slowly splintering its way through a forest.

“This glacier is about 30 yards longer than it was last year,” said Bjoern Andreas Ovesen, a guide on Eventyrisen, a glacier in southern Norway where huge chunks of ice are crawling down a barren valley.

The glaciers are growing in size because more snow is falling on them and turning into ice, scientists say.

Climatologists say pollution is driving up world temperatures, threatening to melt glaciers and the polar ice. This could raise the level of the oceans and flood low-lying coastal areas, they predict.

But Prof. Olav Orheim, head of the Antarctic section at the Norwegian Polar Reseach Institute in Oslo, said theories of the so-called “greenhouse effect” had largely missed the side effects of higher temperatures--such as more snow.

“In western Norway, all small glaciers, which respond most quickly to climate changes, are now advancing,” Orheim said.

Global warming means not only that more ice melts in the summer, but also that more moisture is sucked up from the oceans and falls as rain or snow. Some parts of Norway have had record summer temperatures--and record snowfalls.

Norway’s western glaciers are among the best monitored in the world. They have generally tended to shrink since the 18th Century but have begun to grow again in the last year or two.

More snow dumped on glaciers could slow a current rise in sea levels of between one and two milimeters--four-hundreths to eight-hundredths of an inch--a year. But Orheim predicted that it is unlikely to go so far as to reverse the trend.

Visitors to the Eventyrisen Glacier--roped together for safety in case one slips into a crevasse--hear muffled thuds and growls as the ice grinds downhill, moving on average about 3 inches a day.

Eventyrisen, which means “fairy ice,” is named after the weird shapes--towers, bridges and pyramids--formed by chunks of ice as the glacier crumples into a narrowing valley at an elevation of about 5,600 feet.

Visitors stare down deep, blue crevasses, while a pinkish algae grows on the surface. Dust blown onto the glacier every summer leaves dark lines sandwiched between the layers of ice built up in the winters.

While Eventyrisen has grown in the last couple of years, it is several hundred yards short of where it was around 1930 and far smaller than it was in the so-called Little Ice Age of about 1750.

“We don’t know if the (shrinking) trend has reversed in general, but in Norway there has been a remarkable rise in snowfalls in recent years,” Orheim said.

“On top of Jostedal Glacier, we’ve had more than 40 feet of snow, when the normal is about 15 feet.”

Jostedal is the biggest glacier in continental Europe. Nearby, the Supphelle Glacier is crushing a forest of 12-foot alder trees.

But the pattern of more snow does not hold true all over Norway.

In the east, where the 1994 Winter Olympics are to be staged, less snow than normal has fallen in recent years. In the south, higher temperatures mean more and more precipitation falls as rain.

Only in recent years have scientists begun to measure the Antarctic ice, which accounts for 90% of the world’s permanent ice on land and, as such, is most relevant to global warming. Other glaciers, mainly in Greenland, account for the rest.

The vast expanse of Arctic ice floating around the North Pole does not pose a threat to sea levels--even if it all melted, the oceans would not rise, Orheim said.

To prove this, Orheim said, put a few ice cubes in a glass and fill it to the brim with water. Bet against anyone who thinks the water will spill when the ice jutting out melts. Ice is less dense than water so the level stays the same.