00:00High in the Canadian Rockies, the snowpack is disappearing.
00:06So now that station runs mostly on wind power generation.
00:09A team of scientists is climbing one of its iconic peaks to figure out why.
00:14Right now we're climbing into the Fortress Mountain Research Area.
00:18And this has some of the deepest snow on the east side of the Canadian Rockies.
00:23And that snowpack is critical for the water supply.
00:26It drives the economy of a vast area of western North America.
00:31Every year, billions of tons of snow fall onto these mountaintops.
00:43In April, the snow begins to melt.
00:45And slowly over the course of the summer, trickles down and feeds the rivers that irrigate 700,000 hectares of farmland.
00:57The timing is crucial.
00:59If the melt comes too early, the ground may still be frozen.
01:04If it comes too late, the crops could dry out.
01:08Over half of humanity receives its critical water supplies from the high mountains.
01:13And the high mountains are incredibly threatened by global warming.
01:16We're losing these snowpacks. We're losing our mountain water security.
01:20And that means we're losing our food security.
01:23Oh, let's see how the transmission is doing.
01:28And it isn't just the snowpack that's being lost on this mountain range.
01:33This area has warmed much faster than lower elevations in Canada.
01:38And the higher up the mountains you go, the greater the warming.
01:41So, over there is a place where we had a glacier just a few decades ago.
01:46And so it's within living memory, this area has deglaciated.
01:50You can still see the rather curved rock through there.
01:53It has ice underneath it.
01:55And it is still melting away. It's providing water as it melts downstream.
01:59But it's an extinct glacier.
02:02So, it's still melting away.
02:04And it is still melting away. It's providing water as it melts downstream.
02:08But it's an extinct glacier. It's essentially finished.
02:12And so that's occurred within our lifetimes associated with the climate warming
02:17that's already occurred in the Canadian Rockies.
02:19And hundreds of glaciers like that have disappeared since the 1970s.
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