Portage glacier
| Portage glacier | ||
|---|---|---|
 The Portage Glacier from Portage Lake as seen |
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| location | Alaska ( USA ) | |
| Mountains | Kenai Mountains | |
| Type | Outlet glacier | |
| length | 7.5 km | |
| Exposure | North northeast | |
| Altitude range | 1200 m - 36 m | |
| width | ⌀ 1 km | |
| Coordinates | 60 ° 43 '38 " N , 148 ° 49' 8" W | |
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| drainage | Portage Lake → Portage Creek → Turnagain Arm | |
.jpg) View from Portage Pass to the glacier |
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The Portage Glacier is a glacier in the Kenai Mountains on the Kenai Peninsula in the US state of Alaska . It is south of Portage Lake , into which it flows, and six kilometers west of Whittier .
The Portage Glacier is now 7.5 kilometers in length. During the past 100 years it has withdrawn 5 km. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the face of the glacier tongue was at the western end of Portage Lake. The highest retreat speed of 140 to 160 meters per year took place between 1939 and 1950, when the end of the glacier shifted from solid ground into the lake and the glacier lost much of its mass due to calving . Since 1999, when the end of the glacier at the eastern end of the lake reached solid ground again, the retreat speed has slowed significantly and is only based on the melting caused by global warming. The Burns Glacier used to meet the lower part of the Portage Glacier when coming from the right. Due to the retreat of both glaciers, they now form two independent glaciers.
The name of the glacier, which has its origin in the " Portage " between Prince William Sound and Turnagain Arm , was first mentioned in 1898 by Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, a meteorologist and physicist from the US Coast and Geodetic Survey .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ A Century of Retreat at Portage Glacier - US Geological Survey, Fact Sheet 2006-3141 (PDF file; 516 kB)