Breane's front position changes in 2015
In the autumn, the Norwegian Glacier Museum carried out the annual front position measurements on some glaciers in the local area.
Bøyabreen and Store Supphellebreen have been part of the measurement program since 2003 and 1992 respectively. We have carried out the measurements on the regenerated parts of the glaciers that lie at the foot of the mountain during the glacier fall. The glaciers have been difficult to measure in recent years as avalanches and ice slides control how these masses change, and it is not always that we find blue ice when we measure them. In addition, the glaciers are melting again due to increased average temperatures. It has not been possible to measure Bøyabreen and Store Supphellebreen accurately enough this year, which means that we do not get figures on the front position changes. This is a problem we have been waiting for in recent years and it now appears that we will have to end the measurement series.
The Bøya glacier in Fjærland, October 2015. (photo: Pål Gran Kielland).
It is not just the glaciers in Fjærland that are difficult to measure. Senior engineer at NVE, Hallgeir Elvehøy, had this to say about the status of the measurements: "It is a shame to interrupt measurement series, but if the measurements are not representative of glacier development, then there is no other option. We are considering terminating Briksdalsbreen..." For Briksdalsbreen, there is a measurement series dating back to 1901 that is now in danger of also having to be interrupted.
Briksdalsbreen in autumn 2013 seen from the top of Oldeskaret (Photo: Pål Gran Kielland).
But fortunately we have two other glaciers that we can still measure the front position of. These are Vetle Supphellebreen and Haugabreen. Here we measure directly on the blue ice in the glacier fronts. Vetle Supphellebreen advanced 8 meters and since we started measuring the glacier in 2011 it has retreated a total of 14 meters. We cannot draw conclusions about the development of the glacier from year to year, since glaciers have a delayed reaction time in a hot climate, but the results since 2011 fit in with the trend we have with a warming climate and shrinking glaciers over time. We actually have good evidence of this trend, since there are old measurements with a fairly long measurement series from 1899 to 1944 where the glacier retreated over 400 meters. We also found an old picture from 1884 where you can clearly see that there were larger ice masses before, which shows that the climate has become warmer in modern times.
Vetle Supphellebreen in 1884 (photo: Steensrup, KJD) and 2015 (photo: Pål Gran Kielland).
Measurements of the front of Haugabreen show a retreat of 7 meters in 2015. We only have two years of measurements, but the figures show that the glacier has melted a total of 20 meters back. Here too, we cannot draw conclusions about the development of the glacier with such a short series of measurements, but we can look back in time when there are actually measurements of Haugabreen all the way back to the period 1933 - 1940. At that time, it was Anders Briksdal who measured the glacier, and he recorded that it melted 237 meters back during these years. The fixed point he measured the distance to the glacier from was a cairn on a large rock on the east side of the river in Haugadalen. This was natural since he came over Oldeskaret from Briksdalen. He described, among other things, that the lower part of the glacier tongue was completely flat, which could indicate that the glacier tongue was quite thin and in decline. Based on these old measurements, the glacier edge in 1939 was probably located on the flats in Haugadalen, before the rock rises steeper towards today's glacier front.
Haugabreen glacier in the 1930s (photo: NGU) and in 2012 (photo: Pål Gran Kielland).