Utah’s mountains are hiding a ton of ice — perhaps a billion tons of it.
Those ice troves are locked inside “rock glaciers,” which are hidden under a shell of rocky scree that insulates the ice and slows its melt. Scientists are now getting a better grasp on the amount of water those glaciers hold, and what they could mean for a warming and drying West.
“They’ve been studied for quite a long time,” said Leif Anderson, an assistant professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah. “The real puzzle is how much ice is actually in them.”
Researchers have documented around 51,000 large rock glaciers across the globe, and about 10% of them are found in the Western U.S. Utah alone is home to roughly 800 large rock glaciers.
Now, research on one of Utah’s most prominent rock glaciers is helping scientists put a number on that hidden ice.
Using their findings from the Timpanogos Rock Glacier, researchers estimate that Utah’s rock glaciers could collectively hold about 1 billion tons of ice.
“We can’t say for sure,” Anderson said, “but that’s the guess.”
That’s around 815,000 acre-feet of water, enough to support the basic annual needs of about 1.6 million Utah households.
Read the full article by Leia Larsen at sltrib.com.
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.