Rock glaciers look very completely different from standard glaciers. As a substitute of uncovered ice, they resemble sprawling fields of free rock, whereas doubtlessly concealing massive portions of ice under the floor. These formations are widespread throughout Utah’s Wasatch and Uinta ranges and may also be discovered on the Colorado Plateau within the La Sal Mountains close to Moab.
College of Utah geologists have now taken an in depth look inside one of many state’s largest examples, the Timpanogos Rock Glacier beneath the outstanding summit of Mount Timpanogos close to Salt Lake Metropolis and Provo. Two new research study how the glacier shaped and reveal how a lot ice is buried inside it. By detecting extraordinarily small variations within the gravitational pull of rock and ice, the researchers developed a brand new option to create a 3D picture of the hidden ice inside a big rock glacier.
The outcomes present that Timpanogos Rock Glacier incorporates about 1.5 million cubic meters of frozen water, sufficient to fill roughly 600 Olympic swimming swimming pools. Bronson Cvijanovich, a former graduate scholar within the Division of Geology & Geophysics, famous that that is additionally about the identical quantity as the most important pyramid at Giza in Egypt.
“Timpanogos Rock Glacier is surprisingly ice wealthy. It’s 83% ice and 17% free rock,” stated Cvijanovich, lead writer of one of many two research overseen by geophysics professor Michael Thorne and glaciology professor Leif Anderson.
Hidden Ice Beneath Mount Timpanogos
“There’s a number of ice that is hidden in Utah’s mountains,” Anderson stated. “Once we are excessive within the mountains and strolling throughout free rocks or rubble, you do not understand there may very well be 120 toes of ice buried beneath your toes.”
Throughout the fall of 2024, Cvijanovich led a sequence of discipline journeys to Timpanogos Rock Glacier, carrying delicate tools to the buried ice above Emerald Lake. Among the many devices was a state-of-the-art gravimeter. Throughout six journeys, he collected gravity measurements at 232 areas organized in a grid throughout the glacier, with every level separated by 25 meters (~80 toes).
A gravimeter can detect variations in density, permitting researchers to differentiate the denser surrounding rock from the a lot lighter buried ice. These measurements can then be used to estimate the form and thickness of the hidden glacier.
“There’s a massive distinction in mass density between the rock that makes up Mount Timpanogos and the a lot decrease density ice that’s in rock glacier adjoining to it,” Thorne stated. “Once we measure the gravitational acceleration over the rock glacier, we see a bigger lower in that gravitational acceleration as we make measurements over areas with thicker ice.”
Constructing a 3D View With Gravity
Gathering the gravity knowledge was solely step one. The researchers additionally needed to account for delicate adjustments attributable to the positions of the solar and the moon, in addition to variations in terrain, latitude, and elevation.
After making these corrections, the crew developed a brand new technique for reconstructing the glacier’s inner ice in three dimensions utilizing Bayesian statistics. “We spent months of computation time doing the imaging with our new strategies,” Thorne stated.
Satellite tv for pc photos can present the floor footprint of a rock glacier, however they supply a lot much less details about its depth, inner construction, and complete quantity of buried ice. Measuring these options requires devices able to revealing what lies beneath the rubble, just like how a CT scanner can reveal bones and tissues contained in the human physique.
How Utah’s Rock Glaciers Kind
Rock glaciers generally develop beneath steep mountain valleys or cirques the place falling particles commonly collects. Within the Wasatch Mountains, that falling materials seems to play a key function in defending snow from melting.
“Within the Wasatch, the mountains themselves are eroding and burying the snow, and that is why the rock glaciers exist,” Anderson famous.
The researchers developed a brand new mathematical mannequin describing how these glaciers develop. Their outcomes recommend that rockfalls repeatedly cowl persistent snow within the higher sections of rock glaciers, including mass and serving to protect the snow beneath layers of particles.
The second examine additionally signifies that Utah’s rock glaciers will not be leftover options from the Ice Age (which reached its peak 21,000 to 18,000 years in the past). As a substitute, they’re reservoirs of frozen water that developed throughout the 1000’s of years after the key Ice Age glaciers disappeared.
A Probably Enormous Mountain Water Reserve
Timpanogos Rock Glacier is considered one of 836 rock glaciers recognized throughout Utah by way of satellite tv for pc imagery. Utilizing the detailed measurements from Timpanogos, the researchers established a relationship between a rock glacier’s floor space and the amount of ice saved beneath it.
They then utilized that relationship extra broadly. Their calculations recommend that the roughly 50,000 identified rock glaciers world wide might collectively include about 48 gigatons of water. Equal to 1 billion metric tons, a gigaton is the equal of a cubic kilometer of water, sufficient to fill 400,000 Olympic swimming swimming pools.
Inside Utah alone, rock glaciers could include about 1 gigaton of water, or roughly 815,000 acre-feet, in keeping with the researchers.
Two Research Study Utah’s Hidden Ice
The analysis titled “The inner ice content material of Timpanogos Rock Glacier, Utah, USA from 3-D Bayesian inversion of gravity knowledge,” was revealed Aug. 26 within the Journal of Geophysical Analysis.
The sooner paper, “Mass Addition to Timpanogos Rock Glacier: Particles‐ Coated Snow and the Significance of Interannual Variability in Headwall Erosion and Local weather,” appeared in Geophysical Analysis Letters on April 2, 2026. Isaiah Davies, an undergraduate at Stanford College and visiting summer season researcher on the College of Utah in 2023, was the lead writer.
The analysis was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey, Nationwide Science Basis, College of Utah’s Wilkes Middle for Local weather Science & Coverage, the U’s Workplace of Undergraduate Analysis, and the Summer time Program for Undergraduate Analysis.
