A natural gas flare from an offshore oil drilling rig is seen in Cook Inlet in an undated photo. (Photo by Paul Souders/Getty Images)
For many long-time Juneau residents, the Mendenhall Glacier has served as a bold, barren barometer of climate change. Through the decades, we’ve all watched the rapid retreat and the appearance of more and more rock on both sides of the glacier. But now with two disastrous glacial dam outbursts, we see that the Mendenhall Glacier can also register the immediate —OMG — disaster side of climate change.
To Juneau’s credit, the flood of hundreds of homes brought out a healthy response from local, state and federal officials. The combined efforts focused on flood recovery is impressive, as noted in the Juneau Empire .
What also caught my attention was an article about Sen. Dan Sullivan’s focus on finding an ‘engineering solution’ to “jokulhlaups” — the Icelandic geological term for glacial outburst flood.
Juneau cannot prosper with the threat of annual floods on the scale we have just experienced, and as such, it makes sense to look for a near-term solution to the very real threat of more jokulhlaups. However, as the Mendenhall Glacier also reminds us, climate change makes jokulhlaups likely in new areas with new threats requiring broader solutions.