Even the defiant Taku Glacier, long resistant to warming, has started shrinking

Chris McNeil has journeyed to Alaska's sprawling Taku Glacier at least once a year for the last decade. At 259 square miles, it's larger than Chicago. "You can see across this thing for days," said McNeil, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey.

For decades, Taku has been exceptional. Unlike most Alaskan glaciers, Taku had resisted shrinking. Between the 1940s and 1980s, Taku attracted significant scientific interest because it grew while the glaciers around it, collectively called the Juneau Icefield, thinned. By the 1990s and into the 2000s, Taku had stopped growing, and stalled. But now, glacier scientists have confirmed that even Taku — a robust glacier 4,860 feet thick — has finally started to lose mass.  Read more...

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