Climate activist Thunberg and U of S scientist Pomeroy meet on Athabasca Glacier
SASKATOON John Pomeroy remembers what the Athabasca Glacier used to look like. As a geography student at the University of Saskatchewan in 1979, he participated in a field trip that saw him trekking across the then-expansive icy surface.
Getting that experience as a young man, and being able to see how the glacier has changed over time, was a powerful experience, Pomeroy said. So he was happy to hear about teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg’s interest in seeing it for herself during her North American tour.
Thunberg, 16, met with Pomeroy and a U of S team on Tuesday at the University of Saskatchewan field research site on the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper, Alta. Pomeroy, who serves as director of the Global Water Futures program (the largest university-led water security research project in the world), shared his experience with Thunberg, who was just as interested in his personal stories as his scientific ones.
“How do you feel about the glacier melting so quickly?” she asked Pomeroy, according to U of S.
“As a person, it makes me feel like my home is being taken from me,” Pomeroy said. “But as a scientist, it makes me feel like I want to understand this better.”
They spent about six hours on one of the most visited glaciers in North America. As snow whipped around them, Pomeroy dug into the glacier with an ice axe in order to show her the surface.
“She was very brave to go up on a snow-covered glacier in a blizzard in October. She’s clearly utterly fearless for a teenager,” Pomeroy said. Pomeroy told her about how the glacier had retreated two kilometres since the late 1800s and how it had lost tens of metres of thickness in the past few decades.
Pomeroy said it’s easy to see the impact by looking at the glacier, but they were also able to show Thunberg why by digging into the ice.
“Clearly, as is very apparent in her public persona, she is a very serious person, but clearly a very smart person,” he said.
“She’s a strong figure with strong views. From a science end, I like the message: ‘Listen to scientists and focus on the science.’ ”
The Athabasca Glacier is melting faster than ever — it experienced six metres of ice melt this year, the highest Pomeroy’s team has ever measured. Its surface is darkening because of soot from forest fires in B.C. and algae is darkening it even further and accelerating its melt. Since the 1960s, winter minimum temperatures have gone up five degrees and overall temperatures by two to three degrees.
“This all threatens the future of our river flows from Saskatoon and the North Saskatchewan through Prince Albert,” Pomeroy said.
Thunberg first entered the public eye when she instigated a school strike in Sweden in August 2018. In the year since, similar strikes to raise support and awareness for climate action have taken place in more than 150 countries. Thunberg, who was recently included in Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people of the year, has spoken at the United Nations headquarters, the U.N. climate summit and the World Economic Forum.
The teen, on Twitter following the visit, thanked Pomeroy and Parks Canada ecologist Brenda Shepherd for “the incredible experiences” and for educating her “on the effects of the climate and ecological crisis on stunning Jasper National Park.”
“I was lucky in ’79, the university had that field trip,” Pomeroy said. “And lucky that there was interest in all this now from such a prominent person.”