PORT ANGELES — Howard Conway of the University of Washington will present “Blue Glacier: Past, Present and Future” at 7 p.m. tonight (Tuesday).
The free lecture, which is open to the public, will be at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center, 3002 Mount Angeles Road.
It is the last in the park’s Perspectives Winter Speakers Series, which began in November.
“Climate change since the Little Ice Age has caused shrinkage of alpine glaciers worldwide. Blue Glacier is no exception,” the park said in a news release.
The University of Washington has conducted research on Blue Glacier since 1957, a record of change that is one of the longest for any glacier in North America, the park said.
“Current research focuses on the state of the glacier and its response to regional changes in temperature and snowfall,” the park said.
“A goal is to determine what lies ahead for Blue and other glaciers in the Olympic Mountains under future climate scenarios.”
In January 2012, Bill Baccus, park physical scientist, said Blue Glacier had lost 18 percent of its mass between 1982 and 2010.
Conway is a research professor studying glaciers. He earned a doctorate in chemical and process engineering at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1986.
For more information, contact Dean Butterworth at 360-565-3146 or dean_butterworth@nps.gov.
