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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand’s biggest glacier is melting at its fastest pace in recent history, a scientist said Thursday.
The Tasman Glacier on South Island was 18 miles long in 1990, with virtually no lake at its front edge, Massey University glacier expert Martin Brook said.
New measurements last week showed the glacier was 14 miles long, he said. Meanwhile, a lake that has formed next to the glacier is now 4.4 miles long, 1.2 miles wide and 800 feet deep, he said.
Despite global warming since the 1850s, the glacier had been protected “and kind of insulated” from the sun’s heat by its cover of rock debris, but eventually a lake started to form, Brook said.
